Álvaro Schwartz Micheletti

In my MSc thesis, I studied smallholder farming in Western Bahia, a region marked by the expansion of intensive soy production in the Brazilian Northeast. As a part of the area known as MATOPIBA (standing for the parts of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia covered by the cerrado savannah), Western Bahia has been a crucial space for Brazilian agribusiness development since the 1980s, as it offered abundant land with unclear land titling and high agronomic potential.

I engaged with the tradition of rural sociology to critically analyze the rural landscape of the region, focusing on the smallholder farmers that lived there since before it was occupied by large-scale industrial farming, and continue to farm there through all the changes that occurred since the 1980s.

Figure 1 – Old wood fence, common before the generalization of barbed wire, located in Mutum, between the municipalities of Santana and Canápolis. Source: the author, fieldwork in nov/dec 2022

While the region is often understood in terms of what industrial farming made of it (focusing on the fast and dramatic economic growth, emphasizing the construction of infra-structure for exports, and the use of natural resources for intensive farming), this thesis relied on fieldwork observations and interviews to describe the dynamics, resource use patterns, and spatial distribution of the remaining smallholder farmers in the margins of the soy-producing landscape. The two main research questions were:

• What have been the main impacts of the expansion of the soy frontier on smallholder farmers?
• What are some strategies used by farmers in the margins of soy frontiers to continue farming?

The thesis offers a historical overview of the changes to smallholder production associated with different social and technical changes in the region (e.g. the construction of irrigation channels in the first half of the 20^th century, or the introduction of new cattle breeds and barbed wire fences from the 1950s) and shows different strategies used by a variety of smallholder farmers in the landscape to maintain their rural livelihoods.

Byapproaching the rural landscape from the point of view of smallholder farming systems, the development of industrial agriculture is shown to have substantial negative social and environmental impacts, reducing water availability east of the soy plantations and arguably impacting rainfall and water infiltration patterns. Moreover, some data was provided on the link between the expansion of the industrial farming frontier with green grabbing through the registration as private conservation areas (reservas legais) of important areas traditionally used by smallholder farmers.

Figure 2 – Free-range cattle in the common grazing area of Destocado, between Canápolis and Santana, Bahia, Brazil. Source: the author, fieldwork in nov/dec 2022.

Conversely, the research also provided insights into the difficulties faced by farmers with increasing connection with towns and broader markets in a region where modernization was largely driven by a model that does not include these alternative farming models in the slightest. In this context, the research showed ways through which local farmers could improve or secure their livelihoods and be a part of broader political or economic networks, such as the engagement in social movements for the recognition of rights to traditional common grazing grounds (gerais) or the occasional swerve towards market gardening or milk production in a region where monetary income historically depended solely on cattle production.

If you are interested in the topic of the thesis, you can read it here or contact the author through the e-mail alvlapa@gmail.com

Schwartz Micheletti, Álvaro. 2024. Soy veredas: smallholder farmer strategies on the margins of the agrarian frontier in Western Bahia, Brazil. (MSc Thesis in International Development Studies). Wageningen University and Research. Supervisor: Joost Jongerden