BENCHMARKING DE EMPRESAS Y TECNOLOGÍAS

As the foregoing analysis demonstrates, the common concern of ensuring increased international market-access for Brazilian agriculture, and the concrete steps to jointly pursue this within the international regulatory formation, came into being as the consequence of a range of different external and internal developments. At the external level, the formation of an international space for agricultural regulation, the change in market structures and financialization, as well as the proliferation of liberal ideas for agricultural development had significant influence within both public institutions and the private sector. At the domestic level, the agricultural reform movement, the change away from the developmentalist orientation of the Brazilian state, and technical modernization of agriculture also changed the internal rural structure, and pushed towards the international orientation of Brazilian agriculture.

This can thereby, in line with Kolberg (2009), be characterized as a process of conjunctural causation, by which the constellation of a range of mutually enforcing and interdependent variables produce a particular phenomenon. In the case of the joint international public-private engagement examined in the foregoing, this may be seen as the result of six interrelated causal movements, related to the six variables examined in this chapter. These overlapped in terms of the results which they produced, but it is nonetheless difficult to establish any internal relationship of antecedence amongst them.

Yet, they can all be related to the overall liberal dynamics which became dominant within the global food system in the 1980-1990s, or in the case of the structural transformation of the Brazilian economy in this period, to the more general process of liberalization of the global economy. The neo-liberal global turn may thus in the most general sense be characterized as the antecedent variable, but in order to understand the more specific impacts upon Brazilian agricultural transformations, it becomes important

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to pay attention to the parallel liberalizations within the subfield of agriculture.

When the food system is treated through the Gramscian conception of a historical structure, it becomes interesting to observe how the liberal transformations depart from the global level, and impact the levels of the state, and that of social forces of production. Other transformational dynamics can be treated as causal movements which depart from the state level, or the level of production structures. Changes which in some sense push for a rearrangement of state-agribusiness relations in Brazil, and stimulate a joint public-private international engagement have thereby emanated from different sites, and different material, institutional, and ideational dimensions of the food system matrix presented below. This study´s framework which crosses the different levels of the global food system with its different dimensions thereby seeks to illustrate causal movements that depart from one particular locus within this matrix, and spurs transformations within other spheres. These causal movements are related to the variables examined in this chapter, and are summarized in the following:

Changes within the institutional dimension of the food system: occurred through the establishment of a multilateral trading system which for the first time incorporated significant proportions of national agricultural regulation below its institutional scope. It thereby pushed for a range of domestic transformations within this field, but also offered a new incentive structure along with an institutional vehicle, through which competitive agricultural producers could pursue, and amplify, their external market access. In the case of Brazil, a liberal agricultural reform process took place in parallel to the Uruguay negotiations. This meant that before the end of the negotiations, both the private sector and important public institutions had gained faith in the negotiations, and begun to organize towards presenting more offensive demands.

Towards the turn of the century, this has reached a point at which Brazilian agribusiness has become characterized by a broad cross-sectorial organization with the goal of pursuing common objectives through international commercial negotiations. The cooperation between public and private actors had also reached a point of incipient institutionalization around a mutual stance of broad international agricultural liberalization. On the matrix in figure 7 below, it can thus be observed how a movement within the institutional dimension of the global food system implied strong repercussions within the organization of the state and subnational productive forces, catalyzing a newfound international orientation:

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Figure 7: impacts of the transformation within the institutional dimension of the global food system on Brazilian agriculture.

Source: Author´s elaboration

Changes within the material/productive dimension of the global food system: became manifest in form of a global process of verticalization of agricultural production and distribution structures, which connected large parts of Brazilian agricultural production - and accumulation potential - to international markets. The development towards export-orientation was supported by the entry of international agribusiness, which served to strengthen the backwards and forwards linkages of Brazilian agricultural production. The process of financialization further spurred the production of monocultures and crops with a high global tradable potential. In this respect, changes within the material dimension of the global food system also catalyzed transformations within the level of social forces of production in Brazil. Yet, a certain degree of active engagement by the state also appears to be evident, in terms of spurring this development by facilitating the introduction of private financial mechanisms and through supportive measures for the expansion of specialized commercial agriculture.

As is illustrated in figure 8 below, the changes within global agricultural production structures thereby seem to have stimulated the internationally oriented restructurings

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both on the level of social forces of production and on the production-related dimension of the state:

Figure 8: impacts of the transformation within the material/productive dimension of the global food system on Brazilian agriculture.

Source: author´s elaboration

Changes within the ideational dimension of the food system: have taken place in parallel to the global proliferation of neo-liberal ideology during this period.

These also became manifest within Brazilian agriculture along with the incursion of this thought system, from the 1980s. In relation to domestic politics, this ideological movement pushed for the adherence to the general process of liberalization of international agricultural markets, through a logic which accentuated the impossibility of Brazil distancing itself from the central dynamics of global economic integration.

Neo-liberal ideas also appear to have been central to the market-oriented agricultural productivity paradigms which surged in the wake of the decline of previous paradigms associated with developmentalism. It is important to underline, that the liberal ideological movement not only was internalized in terms of domestic restructurings, but also became an essential part of private and public sector demands for the further opening of global markets. Adherence to the underlying principles of the liberal global

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economic order proposed by developed countries, thus became a central concern to the Brazilian state and its agribusiness sector. In figure 9 below, the ideological movement from the ideational dimension of the world order towards the national level and the level of productive forces within Brazil, can be noted:

Figure 9: impacts of the transformation within the ideational dimension of the global food system on Brazilian agriculture.

Source: author´s elaboration

Changes in the orientation of the Brazilian state: came about as the result of internal and external pressures on the previous developmentalist economic model. As a result of the new orientation of the Brazilian state, the bias towards industry relative to commodity sectors was reconsidered, and a global economic insertion within which the later necessarily came to occupy a more central position, was pursued. The political reorientation which was part of the structural transformation of the Brazilian economy also contained an increasing emphasis upon multilateralism as a means for Brazil to promote its national economic interests; particularly within international commercial negotiations. Though this emphasis gradually moved from close alignment with the global economic core regions, towards also including alternative alliances of developing countries from the turn of the millennium, the essential faith in the multilateral

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engagement has remained constant. Cooperation with national capital has been a fundamental part of this strategic engagement, and in globally competitive sectors, this has made it possibly to institutionalize an offensive engagement, as has been the case with agriculture. As can be seen in the figure 10 below, transformations within the ideational dimension on the state-level thereby spilled over into the institutional dimension, both at the state-level and at that of social forces of production, realigning dispositions at these loci towards global commercial engagement:

Figure 10: impacts of changes within the ideological orientation of the Brazilian state and the concomitant repercussions of this within the domestic institutional framework for Brazilian agriculture.

Source: author´s elaboration

The agricultural reform movement: became the consequence of a pressed fiscal situation in the 1980s, which led to the curtailing of de-facto subsidies in form of the rural credit system. The conjunction of reforms of the minimum price system, targeted tax cuts, as well as export and import liberalizations, meant that commercial export-oriented agriculture began to grow, - partly on behalf of smallholders which faced financial problems. The agricultural sector at large, though, began to grow faster than industry in terms of its proportion of the Brazilian economy, and it also became

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vital in terms of external revenue generation. From the 1990s, the reforms thereby assumed a more strategic character in terms of spurring the sector´s international competitive potential. This also meant that international regulation and market access became increasingly significant in relation to defining the sector´s future growth, and the international engagement to influence rule-making at this level may thereby be seen as a prolongation of the internal reform movement. As illustrated in figure 11 below, a causal movement departs from the level of the state within the productive dimension, towards the level of social productive forces, which refers to the economic transformations which formed the basis of the international competitive strategy of Brazilian agriculture:

Figure 11: Impacts of agricultural reforms within Brazilian agriculture on the productive forces within the sector

Source: author´s elaboration

Technical modernization within agriculture: was carried forward by national plans to open new regions to agricultural production and by strong public investment in biotechnological and agronomic research. This came to wield a significant impact on the productive sector, and constituted an essential basis which permitted the subsequent rise in production. The public engagement in creating the conditions for the growth of

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large-scale agriculture thereby spurred the private sector´s growth, and formed the basis for the development of its international competitiveness. In the matrix in figure 12 below, the causal movement within the production dimension emanating from the level of the state, which reconfigures the level of social forces of production, is depicted:

Figure 12: Impacts from the agricultural modernization and inwards expansion on the composition of productive forces within Brazilian agriculture

Source: author´s elaboration

The reorientation of Brazilian agriculture and the joint public-private engagement can thereby be seen as the result of a range of dynamics, within which neoliberalism is a central component. The present chapter has summarized six central currents within this general process, which have been found to hold a high degree of explanatory value in order to account for this internationalization. Though some of these liberal currents, or movements, are globally rooted while others derive from the national level, they are all consonant with the general process of liberalization within the international political economy in the last decades of the 20th century. The food system transformation is related to this general process, but it becomes relevant to examine through separate analytical variables, in order to capture the specific impact of systemic transformation within the global agri-food system. The sub-currents of this food system transformation, treated through the material, institutional, and ideational dimensions

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assume an essential value in order to explain the internationalization of Brazilian agriculture. Yet, in order to describe the specific character of this phenomenon, it has become necessary to analyze some essential domestic variables, related to the agricultural reform process, the structural transformation of the Brazilian economy, and technical modernization of Brazilian agriculture. Together, these systemic impacts thereby profoundly inserted Brazilian agribusiness within international markets and shaped the general foreign policy imperative of supporting the conditions for its participation within these. Since then, this supportive role has constituted a central element of the state´s international economic engagement.

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Chapter 5: Brazilian public-private cooperation in