Agronegócio e controle de terras por agentes estrangeiros no Triângulo Mineiro/Alto Paranaíba: o grupo Bunge Açúcar e Bioenergia

Abstract

The debate over the process of land foreignization has intensified as a result of the convergence of crises, especially after 2008. Such process is understood in this work as the control of territory by foreign capital. That is, the power to control the territory and the territorialities. The foreignization is inserted within a global phenomenon known as land grabbing, which regards to the recent appropriation of lands, whose propelling agents’ origin of this process are not necessarily related to the foreign capital. Brazil has been one of the main targets of the process of land foreignization and presents different peculiarities such as different ways of territory control and appropriation. This control can take place directly, through the purchase and / or lease of land, or indirectly, through the control of natural resources, labor relations and the entire production chain. The geographic mesoregion of the Triângulo Mineiro / Alto Paranaíba, our territorial section in this research, has been affected by the foreignerization, where the biggest controllers are the companies in the sugar-energy sector with mostly American capital. Based on the study of the territorialization of foreign agribusiness, our objective is to comprehend the process of foreignization of the land in the mesoregion, analyzing the territorial dynamics by Bunge Açúcar e Bioenergia. We understand that foreign capital companies’ foreignization and control occur heterogeneously, both in the national territory and in the mesoregion, where the forms of appropriation and the uses of the territory happen in distinctive ways. Bunge has appropriated the territory mainly through leasing lands for the production of sugar cane, incorporating areas which were originally used for growing grains, food and livestock, and thus, modifying the production dynamics of the region. We comprehend that the process of land foreignization leads to not only the loss of national but also food sovereignty, in addition to deterritorializing peasants and other rural peoples.