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The Pontal do Paranapanema is a conflictive territory composed of public lands but appropriated through falsified documentation that are the source of disputes between landowners, sugar-cane agribusiness groups and movements fighting for agrarian reform. The process of sugarcane expansion in the region led to the "enclosure" of the reform agrarian settlements by sugarcane plantations. Because of various difficulties, or even to obtain resources to improve their lands, settled workers have sought jobs in the sugar-cane mills. Currently, the sugarcane harvest is at an advanced stage of mechanisation, a fact that has repercussions on the different functions performed by the workers and on the risks in the work environment. To better understand these processes, we conducted interviews with people involved in mechanized work in the sugarcane sector and used interviews from the DataCETAS database. The results of the research show that the mechanization of cane cutting may have provided an improvement in working conditions, but the intense work and frenetic pace imposed on workers in order to increase labour productivity produce various risk agents in the work environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of expansion and technological changes on sugarcane plantations on the agricultural land structure in São Paulo state from 1975 to 2006 were studied. The Agricultural Census editions of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics were the main source of data, which were analyzed by non-conventional method. The expansion of sugarcane from 1996 to 2006 was accompanied by an increase in the participation of very large agricultural establishments and also the concentration of agricultural land ownership. The concentration of land ownership was less impacted, as entrepreneurs expanded their cane fields more by renting than by acquiring land. Among the main causes of sugarcane expansion were the strong vertical integration between sugar and ethanol factories and sugarcane plantations, not common in other activities that lost ground in São Paulo. In addition, the expansion of the mechanization of the sugarcane harvest made it difficult for small and medium suppliers to stay in sugarcane production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]