Commodification of food and expanded accumulation of capital: the agricultural production and food supply in nowadays Brazil
Name: RAUL RISTOW KRAUSER
Type: MSc dissertation
Publication date: 29/03/2019
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| MAURICIO DE SOUZA SABADINI | Internal Examiner * |
Summary: This thesis starts addressing the contemporary problem of hunger and
malnutrition that affects a significant part of the world population. This
problem arose prior to the capitalist mode of production. It has not been
solved, in spite of the advance of productive forces and the increase in food production. On the contrary, hunger and problems related to food have become worse. This contradiction has played a motivating role in this study. This study is based on the method of dialectical and historical materialism as a reference. It uses literature and secondary data sources as its study methodology. This study is an exercise of making successive estimates related to the main study object: the commodification of food and the food supply system. The study identifies that food in the capitalist mode of production becomes commodity, WHEREas its use value is subordinated to the valuation of
value, in other words, food is transformed into a means for expanded capital accumulation. Besides, food is a fundamental item for the reproduction of labor force, a bio-political input for the development of capitalism, with its production and consumption logic that enticed the emergency of food regimes. The first regime was concentrated in England at the end of the 19th century; the second in the intensive model of North America after the second World War; and the third, the corporate food regime, emerged associated with neoliberalism. The development of these regimes will have its impact on the food supply in Brazil, transforming the country into a huge global food producer while, at the same time, food scarcity and hunger are lasting situations in the daily life of the Brazilian people. From 1999 onwards with the exchange crisis, the agro-export sector is again the one WHERE a solution is expected to come from for the sake of the balance of payments. This
process will imply in important changes in the Brazilian agricultural
production, highlighting its concentration in a smaller number of
agricultural farms; its reduction per capita of food produced for the
internal market; and the expansion of the harvested area and production
obtained from crops for the external market, especially soy, sugar cane and maize. These changes in the agricultural production are symptoms of general laws of the capitalist development. They contribute to the further deepening of the food problem in a way that the contamination of food and its consequences, malnutrition and hunger, do not mean insufficient development of capitalism, on the contrary, they are symptoms of the contradictions created by this mode of production.
