During Fernando Henrique Cardoso's first term in office, the agrarian policy underwent significant changes that marked his second term, as of when Raul Jungmann was appointed Minister of Agricultural Development. Agrarian reform finally encountered its subject, subsistence crop farming, and the State found its agrarian mission as manager of the territory. Thus, the concrete foundations for the exercise of the social function of landownership were established, and the State recovered, in practice, the eminent domination of the country's territory. One of the important provisions was the annulment of irregular land deeds regarding 60 million hectares. The government determined it to be the prerogative of the State to make routine redistribution of concentrated land and to regulate and assure landownership rights associated to the double alternatives of two cohabitating agricultural models: agro-business and subsistence farming.
Agrarian policy; Social unrest; Catholic Church; Subsistence farming