ABSTRACT
The paper examines the effects of the significant changes in Brazil’s agricultural policy during the 1980s, on the ability of its modem agricultural areas to generate jobs and to retain rural population. This was done by identifying large zones of rapid agricultural expansion and modernization, and observing the changes in the decade, in agricultural employment and in rural population. It was possible to establish that the areas of modem agriculture in the country’s Center-South region, and in the savannas (“cerrados”) of the Center-West, either generated very little employment, or experimented declines in agricultural manpower. Moreover, the rural population of all these areas experimented reductions. In the Center-South the declines were quite substantial but even in the “cerrados” there were significant reductions. Therefore, to the contrary of what one might expect from the changes in agricultural policy brought about by the crises of the 1980s, Brazil’s agriculture continued to expel rural manpower and population. However, in the period this expulsion was more selective, being restricted mainly to de dynamic agricultural areas. In the rest of the country, to the contrary of what took place in the 1970s, rural emigration was either small, or there was retention of population. In fact, this contrasting pattern of migration made it possible an overall abatement in Brazil’s rural migration in the 1980s.
KEYWORDS:
Rural exodus; employment; agricultural modernization
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