A expansão da cana-de-açúcar na mesorregião do Triângulo Mineiro/Alto Paranaíba (MG): o discurso da modernidade e as des-(re)-territorializações nos Cerrados do município de Ibiá

Abstract

In this study, we analyzed the installation and expansion of sugar cane plantations in the middle region of Triângulo Mineiro/Alto Paranaíba in Minas Gerais state in Brazil. We pay special attention to a business located in Ibiá county. We analyzed the arrival of bank stock and the restructuring of the sugar cane land base in new territories in the city and the changes in the productive chains with the replacement of traditional agricultural crops in the region. This work was possible thanks to several trips to the field made between March 2008 and April 2010. At which time we saw the contrast between the agents evolved with sugarcane bank stock on one side, landowners and farmers on the other side, in actions involving their territory in order to maintain their productive interests in the region. We demonstrate how the agricultural bank stock is being restructured in a replacement of staff and production cycles that are transforming the agricultural reality concatenate the city reinventing and leaving waste brands and resistance in the area studied. This is happening since they came to the region in the 1960s and intensified their action in the final two decades of the last century The older farmers in the region just prior to the arrival of sugarcane development, suddenly see a sort of competition for access to arable land, especially when they lease the property for planting for a specified period. The distillery plant, paying more for leased land, intensifies the exploitation of rural properties in the region so that other farmers find it difficult to keep their business productive. These difficulties were dressed at some point with the characteristics of deterritorializations and reterritorializations process in the region where such producers, trying to keep their productive activities, reinvent many rehabilitation forms to restructure their productive activities.