‘Cerrado’, old and new agricultural frontiers

The aim of the text is to discuss the occupation of the old and new agricultural frontiers in the ‘Cerrado’, highlighting the influence of official policies which, guided by a model of agricultural expansion intensive in capital, technology, and the use of natural resources, directed economic exploitation to ever more distant areas. It looks at the region called Matopiba, as a continuation of the movement of the exploitation of frontiers still covered in native vegetation. It shows that as well as having the general characteristics of the model of agricultural expansion adopted in other areas of the ‘Cerrado’, agriculture in this new frontier had the particularity of being connected to the global phenomenon of rising foreign ownership of land (‘land grabbing’), due to the increased presence of transnational companies and investment funds in the acquisition of areas, fruit of the movement resulting from the financialization of environmental assets (land, water, and forests). Finally, it deals with the implications of deforestation in the ‘Cerrado’, highlights governmental initiatives aimed at confronting it, as well as the political weight of Brazilian agribusiness, which has reduced the margin of action of environmental policies in the biome. It is concluded that the ‘Cerrado’, since it does not have the social appeal and protected status of forest biomes, seems to form a territory of sacrifice

superior in absolute terms. Perhaps because there still prevails the prejudice that it is an environment with a lower value, an idea occasionally reinforced by schoolbooks (OLIVEIRA, 2014), or, assuming the hypothesis of Oliveira and Hecht (2016) that it is a territory to be sacrificed.
Nevertheless, deforestation is an expensive practice, requiring financial resources. It is not done without an expectation of a later benefit, which can be the expansion of agricultural production or a simple increase in land value, since cleared areas are worth more than those with intact native vegetation. The model of the continuous expansion of agriculture in the Cerrado has both these purposes.
The 'TerraClass Cerrado' study carried out jointly by INPE, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Company (Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária -Embrapa), and other institutions highlights the direct relationship between livestock raising, agriculture, and deforestation. In analyzing the use given to the total size of deforested areas until 2013 (around 885,000 km2), this research reveals that 94.7% of these areas have been used for planted pasture or annual/perennial agriculture (BRASIL, 2015). The expansion of agriculture, the basis of Brazilian agribusiness, is considered fundamental for national economic growth. In this aspect, the Cerrado has been important. According Reis et al. (2017), the biome represents around 60% of the country's agricultural production, leading the production of soybean, corn, cotton, and even sugarcane.
While livestock and agriculture are responsible for the matrix of deforestation in the Cerrado, invariably treated by agribusiness as a frontier, it is important to note this happened in a relatively rapid form. The argument defended here is that the expansion of both economic activities did not occur in a random form, as the exclusive result of the choice of each rural landowner about where, when, and what to cultivate. Behind these preferences was the support of official policies, guided by the model of agriculture intensive in capital, technology, and the use of natural resources. Especially since the 1970s, the construction of infrastructure and fiscal, credit, technological innovation, technical assistance, and colonization policies, etc, induced the establishment of agricultural enterprises in certain regions of the biome, treated as a frontier to be conquered. In continuous occupation over the years, some areas became consolidated, even originating new municipalities. 'Cerrado', old and new agricultural frontiers (2020) 14 (3) e0004 -4/24 This reasoning is returned to in the next section, the objective of which is to discuss the role played by official policies in the exploration of the frontier on the Cerrado. Recognizing that these policies as a whole were essential, the role of directed colonization is briefly discussed, carried out under the auspices of the Nipo-Brazilian Program for Cooperation for the Development of the Cerrado (Programa de Cooperação Nipo-brasileira para o Desenvolvimento do Cerrado -Prodecer), due to its demonstrative effect on agricultural development within large and mid-sized properties.
In the second section, the text demonstrates that the advance of the frontier towards the northern Cerrado led to the exploitation of the region currently known as Matopiba, which corresponds to the junction of the municipalities covered almost exclusively by the vegetational mosaics of the biome in the states of Maranhão, However, it was the governments of the military dictatorship  which undoubtedly did most for the agricultural exploitation of the frontier, through the combination of more infrastructural works and fiscal, credit, agricultural, research, and colonization policies, all under the baton of national integration (BRAGA, 1998;INOCÊNCIO, 2010;PIRES, 2000). From this time onwards, the socalled 'conservative modernization of agriculture' became more evidentan adaptation of the original concept of Barrington Moore Jr (1975) -: an increase in agricultural production through technological renovation without the alteration of the agrarian structure (GUIMARÃES, 1977, p. 03).
Federal planning reflected in the National Development Plans (PAEG 1964-1968, I PND 1972-1974, II PND 1975-1979, III PND 1980-1985 'Polocentro' (1975'Polocentro' ( -1981 had an important role in Central Brazil, since, given the objective of incorporating three million hectares of native area into agricultural activities, making investments in 202 municipalities worth around US$ 750 million, at the values of the time, with priority being given to the opening of roads, rural electrification, and the storage and sale of agricultural products (BRAGA, 1998, p. 98). The intention was to supply internal demand and the international market, which became interested in the potential of the new agricultural frontier.
However, it was clear that to achieve the desired irradiating effect, it was necessary for state action not to be limited to providing credit and fiscal subsidies, building roads, electricity, constructing silos, facilitating commercialization, etc. It was also necessary to demonstrate how production within the mid-sized and large 'fazendas' (large farms or plantations), seen as having potential, had to be converted to modern agriculture (FRANÇA, 1984). Taking  It is also what is seen in Matopiba, as will be dealt with below.

The invention of Matopiba
Territory is a socio-political construction about space, and its shape results from the actions and even disputes among human groups. It was no different with Matopiba, whose birth certificate emerged with the publication of Decree Nº 8447, At that moment (1996), he was already preparing plans to migrate to the south of Piauí: "Well, we are now preparing to go to Piauí, to set up a bigger project which is in a really inhospitable region. However, it will only be worth it if they have Prodecer there. These programs are irradiators of progress" (PIRES, 1996

Implications of deforestation in the Cerrado and control policies
According to estimates, the Cerrado has 5% of the biodiversity on the planet, with endemism of around 40% (MITTERMEIER et al., 2005). Taking into account only what has been catalogued, the Cerrado has more than 12,000 species of plants, 251 species of mammals, and numerous fish (800), reptiles (262), and amphibians (204), as well as a rich avifauna (856 species) (CEPF, 2017, p. 26).
However, 645 of its species of flora and 307 of its fauna are currently threatened with extinction (JOLY, 2019, p. 22). The principal cause of the loss of biodiversity is deforestation. Since the biome has biological importance and an elevated level of threat, it is considered one of the most critical hotspots for global conservation (MYERS et al., 2000).
In addition to the destruction of flora, fauna, and habitats, deforestation from the practice of the model of intensive agriculture, is the harm resulting from the unrestrained use of hydric resources, principally for irrigated crops.
Although the biome is seen as a large 'water tank', which supplies eight of the 12 Brazilian hydrographic basins, and houses the Bambuí, Urucuia, and, principally, the Guarani aquifers, with the latter being the second largest underground hydric   COSTA, 2016;STRASSBURG et al., 2017), even when aware of the risks t hat an increase in productivity can lead to an increase in the use of fertilizers and pesticides, the contamination of hydric resources, etc.

By way of conclusion
Historically, the agricultural sector has known how to raise public incentives for the expansion of its activities, through both direct and indirect means: the pardoning, reduction, or rescheduling of debts, tax exemptions, subsidized funding, etc. A recent example was Provisional Measure 897, from 2019 (later converted into Law 13.986, from 2020), known as the 'MP do Agro', which established various benefits for agribusiness (TEIXEIRA, 2020, p. 276). While these benefits may have been essential to guarantee the feasibility of agricultural enterprises, as their defenders allege, they could well have been combined with counterparts, for example of an environmental order, pointing to a moratorium on deforestation or the minimum recovery of degraded pasture areas for agricultural use; however, this was not even discussed.
In the National Congress the coordinated action of the 'boi', 'bala', and 'bíblia' (cattle, bullets, and bibles) lobbies can be witnessed, giving greater negotiating power to the rural sector. It is for no other reason that measures which make environmental licensing more flexible, review the categories and limits of conservation units, weaken environmental bodies, allowing mining in indigenous lands while halting the demarcation of new areas, and approve massive numbers of new pesticides, amongst others, are being allowed. Looked at jointly they reveal the strategy of taking advantage of political weight to increasingly liberate native areas to the expansion of the agricultural model, whose impacts on the Cerrado were commented on above.
This is the fundamental point which explains why deforestation has consumed half of the Cerrado and will tend to continue to do this in coming years. In the Amazon this can also occur. The economic weight of agribusiness translated into political hegemony favors the continuity of the agricultural expansion model in native areas, even when the clearing of vegetation is justified not because of agricultural production but because it increases the value of the land, as happens in Matopiba and also in the Amazon. This political hegemony reduces the margin for environmental conservation policies, even when these seek to combine economic incentives and obligatory counterparts. Perhaps the difference between the situation of the Amazon and the Cerrado in this case is that in relation to the Amazon demonstrations opposed to the deforestation can be seen all over the world, even in the international financial sector, while the Cerrado continues to be treated as a frontier to be exploited.
This reinforces the thesis that basically the biome continues to be treated as a 'territory of sacrifice', assuming that its 'natural vocation' is agriculture, as commented in the first section. It is as if, admitting 'big land sparing' as advantageous, the unchecked deforestation in the Cerrado compensates the conservation of the forest biomes -a mistaken approach, as shown in the previous section, since environmental harm, extrapolates boundaries.
Translated by Eoin Portela Submitted on July 10,2020 Accepted on August 25, 2020