Inserção e instabilidade do capital internacional no setor sucroenergético brasileiro: uso corporativo e estratégias territoriais do Grupo BP Bunge Bioenergia

Abstract

Driven by a financialized accumulation regime, Brazil experienced, at the turn of the 21st century, several economic, social and, therefore, territorial transformations, implying important changes in agricultural spaces. With the globalization of the economy, profound transformations arise in the production process associated with agriculture, restructuring the space due to the insertion of technique, science and information. It is from this recent context of agribusiness that we intend, in this doctoral thesis, to understand some specific dynamics of the sugar-energy sector (production of sugar cane and derivatives) in the country, specifically evaluating the dynamics that comprise the corporate use of the territory by the BP Bunge Bioenergy Group. In the current century, there has been a significant expansion of sugarcane cultivation in the country, mainly due to the increase in international demands for sugar and the possibilities of affirming ethanol as a new commodity, as a result of the concerns of different countries with global warming, in addition to the emergence of flex fuel technology. Such growth, however, has encountered certain limits since 2015, following the developments of the international financial crisis. It is in this context of crisis, stagnation and slow recovery of the sugar-energy sector that our central research concern emerges. The joint venture established by BP and Bunge, for the creation of BP Bunge Bioenergy, results in a probable strategy for the aforementioned groups to remain in the activities of the sugar-energy sector in an adverse situation, a way of survival in a scenario of stagnation that has prevailed in Brazil since mid 2010s, a situation that led the group to invest in even more intensive land use strategies, with extreme technical rationalization of production and flexible work. Aiming to face the adverse situation in which the sector finds itself, the BP Bunge Group adopts practices of extreme technical rationalization of production, the most significant aspect of which can be recognized in the speed with which the digitalization of production proceeds, as well as the practices of making work more flexibilization, and even its precariousness. These conditions appear necessary to avoid the devaluation of the capital mobilized by the two multinationals in the Brazilian sugar-energy sector.