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This paper is about the ProSAVANA Programme, a trilateral cooperation project between Japan, Brazil and, Mozambique. ProSAVANA Programme goal is to develop the agriculture sector in the Nacala Corridor and it has been controversial due to conflicts among government, private corporations, and civil society organizations. Private investments were expected to occur in the Nacala Corridor, mainly from Brazilian agribusiness, however, Brazilian private investments in Mozambique’s agriculture sector have been in a stagnant state in the period 2007-2017.The paper examines the status of the ProSAVANA Programme and what are the difficulties to Brazilian agribusiness invest to Mozambique. Current challenges of the programme were found as follows: (1) high risk of investment due to non-existent public subsidies to small, medium and large-scale agribusiness; (2) “land property” law bureaucracy; and (3) civil society mobilization against ProSAVANA. All they are key factors to repel Brazilian agribusinesses. Como citar este artigo:KOBASHIKAWA, Tamy Yukie. Brazilian agribusiness in Mozambique: the ProSAVANA Programme case study. Revista NERA, v. 23, n. 51, p. 345-365, jan.-abr., 2020.

Earlier international studies on multifunctional agriculture question rural development and show a new direction to rural areas. This approach is conceptualised as a counter to larger industrial agriculture and integrates social, economic, environmental preservation, productive and cultural values to sustain farming communities among traditional farmers. Brazilian researchers have previously argued for a four-pillar model of rural development to be incorporated to the concept of multifunctional agriculture. This paper presents a framework to investigate this theoretical approach. It presents a Brazilian case study among the Quilombola community of Mandira-Brazil and how it fulfils the four-pillar model. Results show exemplary protection of their cultural and biophysical territory and recognition of their traditional ways by the State, the ability to sustain livelihoods over time, but keeping the youth engaged is a challenge. The case study reveals unique Brazilian lenses towards the approach.

In Brazil, the expansion of sugarcane for ethanol production has fundamentally altered the rural landscape and represents a significant change in the trajectory of the country’s rural development and agrarian reform policies. Current policies are highly skewed in favour of agrofuel industries and are denying landless rural workers and peasant families, like those of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), access to land. In addition to the heavy social costs, the agrofuel industry threatens the environment by polluting the air, water and land. This paper elucidates the socio-environmental impacts of the burgeoning sugarcane-ethanol industry in the Pontal do Paranapanema, a region in the extreme west of the São Paulo state with a long history of land-related conflicts. While corporations reap astronomical profits from the agrofuel industry, the costs of agrofuel expansion in the Pontal do Paranapanema and in Brazil have been disproportionally borne by the environment and the most impoverished and marginalized members of society.

This paper investigates processes of place-making and community formation following agrarian reform resettlement in Brazil. Based on case studies conducted between 2002 and 2004 in several settlements organized by the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, I argue that resettlement through agrarian reform in Brazil is a process of intentional community-building through resettlement and emplacement. Ethnographic data from one settlement, Antonio Conselheiro, shows that land recipients passed through a series of physical movements [displacement, occupation, encampment, settlement] that shape the production of locality, or what I refer to here as emplacement. I discuss key social processes that contribute to emplacement: the transition from individual to imagined community, from imagined community to collectivity, and from collectivity to place-based community.