The Emergence of the Fruit-Growing Consensus in the Jaguaribe Valley (Ceará - Brazil) and the Imposition of a New Water-Use Regime

Abstract

The article investigates the reconfiguration of the geography of water in the Jaguaribe Valley (Ceará, Brazil) in the context of the emergence of the Fruit Agribusiness Consensus and of its role in reorganizing the hydrosocial cycle and regional agrarian dynamics. The central objective is to reveal which socioecological project, within the rounds of neoliberalization, led to the transfiguration of hydric materiality and defined new regimes of water circulation and use. Methodologically, the study articulates the hydrosocial approach with the critique of the agrarian question, mobilizing extensive documentary research to decipher geographic ideologies, territorial policies, and the agents responsible for hegemonizing this process. The results show that the entrepreneurial turn in irrigation, the neoliberal hydric order, and the narrative of the semi-arid region’s “natural advantages” sustained an arrangement that repositioned the role of the State, restructured hydrotechnical systems, and favored the fruit agribusiness frontier. It is concluded that this project consolidated an unequal geography of remainders and benefits, expressed in the coexistence of large, water-concentrating rural estates and a vast social group deprived of adequate access to water.

Keywords:
Agribusiness; agrarian question; neoliberalism

Resumo

O artigo investiga a reconfiguração da geografia das águas no Vale do Jaguaribe (CE) diante da emergência do Consenso da Fruticultura e de seu papel na reorganização do ciclo hidrossocial e da dinâmica agrária regional. O objetivo central consiste em revelar qual projeto socioecológico, no contexto das rodadas de neoliberalização, conduziu a transfiguração da materialidade hídrica e definiu novos regimes de circulação e uso das águas. Metodologicamente, articula-se a abordagem hidrossocial à crítica da questão agrária, mobilizando ampla pesquisa documental para decifrar ideologias geográficas, políticas territoriais e agentes responsáveis pela hegemonização desse processo. Os resultados demonstram que a produção da ideologia geográfica da gestão privada dos recursos hídricos sustentou um arranjo que reposicionou o papel do Estado, reestruturou os sistemas hidrotécnicos e favoreceu o agronegócio fruticultor. Conclui-se que tal projeto consubstanciou uma geografia desigual dos rejeitos e proveitos, expressa na coexistência de grandes propriedades rurais concentradoras de água e de um vasto grupo social privado do seu acesso.

Palavras-chave:
Agronegócio; questão agrária; neoliberalismo

Resumen

El artículo investiga la reconfiguración de la geografía de las aguas en el Valle del Jaguaribe (CE) ante la emergencia del Consenso de la Fruticultura y de su papel en la reorganización del ciclo hidrosocial y de la dinámica agraria regional. El objetivo central consiste en revelar qué proyecto socioecológico, en el contexto de las rondas de neoliberalización, condujo a la transfiguración de la materialidad hídrica y definió nuevos regímenes de circulación y usos del agua. Metodológicamente, se articula el enfoque hidrosocial con la crítica de la cuestión agraria, movilizando una amplia investigación documental para descifrar ideologías geográficas, políticas territoriales y los agentes responsables de la hegemonización de este proceso. Los resultados demuestran que la producción de la ideología geográfica de la gestión privada de los recursos hídricos sustentó un arreglo que reposicionó el papel del Estado, reestructuró los sistemas hidrotécnicos y favoreció al agronegocio frutícola. Se concluye que dicho proyecto consustanció una geografía desigual de desechos y beneficios, expresada en la coexistencia de grandes propiedades rurales concentradoras de agua y de un amplio grupo social privado del acceso al agua.

Palabras clave:
Agronegocio; cuestión agraria; neoliberalismo

Introduction

Extending 680 km, the Jaguaribe River winds through the Sertaneja Depression, carving into the crystalline basement rocks, skirting mountain ranges and plateaus, and depositing sediments across the floodplain, forming an extensive, fertile alluvial plain. Near the end of its course, the river forms mangroves between the municipalities of Fortim and Aracati, interspersed with tidal channels and islands, before ultimately flowing into the Atlantic Ocean.

Although, at first glance, the Jaguaribe River and its valley may be described as manifestations of non-human nature (Souza, 2019), it is important to emphasize that this river basin (Figure 1), rather than merely a natural fact, is a historical product arising from the dialectical relationship between the dynamics of nature and historical processes. In other words, we argue that the geography of water in the Jaguaribe Valley bears the marks of an uneven accumulation of temporalities-geological and historical (Porto-Gonçalves, 2017). Moreover, under the imperatives of the capitalist mode of production, driven by the valorization of value, the nature of this region underwent structural transformations designed to accommodate different regimes of accumulation and, consequently, to determine who has access to the waters of this hydrographic region of Ceará, how they are used, and for what purposes.

Figure 1:
Hydrosocial configuration of the Jaguaribe Valley.

This article seeks to decipher the most recent phase of this prolonged process of transfiguration (Suertegaray, 2021). The analysis focuses on historical processes that took shape during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, that is, between the waning of developmentalist ideology and the onset of successive rounds of neoliberalization (Brandão, 2017).

This period is prioritized because, over these decades, the Jaguaribe River and its valley underwent profound transformations in terms of water availability, distribution, control, and use. During this period, the region shifted, in an uneven and combined manner, from forms of power and production associated with the semi-arid complex (Furtado, 2009) toward the hegemony of irrigated fruit-growing agribusiness, becoming one of Brazil's major production hubs for melon, watermelon, banana, and papaya (Cavalcante, 2020).

The central objective, therefore, is to reveal, through the relationship between the production of the hydrosocial cycle and the agrarian question, which socio-ecological project, within the context of successive rounds of neoliberalization, drove the transformation of the water materiality of the Jaguaribe Valley and, consequently, established new regimes of water use.

The investigation into the form-content of this socio-ecological project was guided by the conceptual pair developed by Moraes (2005a, b): geographical ideologies and territorial policies. More specifically, the analysis sought to map the geographically framed discourses that legitimized and guided the construction of hydro-agrarian territorial policies, while also identifying the actors who drove these spatial practices and, ultimately, indicating which class fractions were their principal beneficiaries.

Notes on the theoretical-methodological framework

To decipher the form-content of the socio-ecological project that drew the waters of the Jaguaribe Valley into successive rounds of neoliberalization, this study establishes a dialogue between the perspective offered by the Political Ecology of Water-particularly the hydrosocial approach (Garnero, 2018; Swyngedouw, 2009)-and the field of the Agrarian Question (Fernandes, 2013; Porto-Gonçalves, 2015).

From this intersection, the hydrosocial cycle is understood as historically produced (Porto-Gonçalves, 2006a; Swyngedouw, 2009). Water is thus captured, rearranged, and endowed with meaning according to socio-ecological projects (Harvey, 2020) that express relations of production and power; in other words, they materialize the balance of forces among class fractions in both their economic and political dimensions.

Within this framework, the State-or, more precisely, the state apparatus-is understood, in its capacity as a condensation of class political power (Osorio, 2019), as the actor with the greatest capacity to drive processes that transform the materiality of water. Two spatial practices (Souza, 2019) mobilized toward this end are therefore particularly relevant: the production and territorialization of geographical ideologies and territorial policies (Moraes, 2005a, b).

Drawing on Moraes (2005a, b), territorial policies are understood as a specific form of political-state practice aimed at enabling the production, appropriation, conquest, and valorization of nature-space. Such policies are sustained by discourses structured around geographical arguments-concerning the nature of the climate and representations of territory, people, and culture-which constitute geographical ideologies.

This type of discourse mobilizes geographical elements through, for example, the dissemination of representations, meanings, and imaginaries concerning nature, space, place, and people to naturalize social issues. It also appears in statements that impose a selective reorganization of nature-space, particularly through the geographical inscription embedded in state programs, plans, and projects (Moraes, 2005a, b). It should be emphasized that, in each historical period, the form-content of the dialectical pair “territorial policies and geographical ideologies” condenses the nature of class conflicts and, consequently, the hegemonic interests of the political bloc that occupies the state apparatus.

For an extended historical period, as documented in a classic study of the agrarian-water question in Brazil’s northeastern semi-arid region (Silva, 2010), the geographical ideology of “combating drought,” serving the interests of the large landowners associated with the cattle-cotton complex, guided the formulation of territorial policies grounded in a negative view of the hydroclimatic system, with particular emphasis on irregular rainfall and the intermittent character of the region’s rivers. However, as discussed below, successive restructurings of the social relations of production and power enabled a new class configuration, beginning in the 1980s, to establish hegemony over the state apparatus, ultimately giving rise to new geographical discourses on the semi-arid region that redefined state practices and, consequently, the region’s unequal geography of water.

In this sense, investigating the spatial practices of the state apparatus is central to deciphering the intentionalities underlying water-oriented socio-ecological projects. It is therefore strategically important to catalogue and unveil the content of the geographical ideologies that, in each historical period, guide and authorize state action.

These geographical ideas acquire material form through the formulation and implementation of territorial policies, particularly plans, programs, projects, and laws forged within the state apparatus. This process reshapes the geography of water, materializing a new hydrosocial configuration-reservoirs, canals, perennialized rivers, irrigation projects, and water-transfer axes-in the service of the hegemony of a new class bloc, thereby establishing new regimes of land, territorial, and water use.

Under this theoretical framework, the methodology adopted to achieve the proposed objective is based on documentary research (Gomes, 2009) spanning the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, with a focus on plans, projects, programs, and laws produced by the federal and state apparatuses. At the federal level, the study surveyed the collections of the National Water Agency (ANA), the National Congress, and the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation. At the state level, the sources included the collections of the Ceará Legislative Assembly, the Ceará Secretariat of Water Resources (SRH), and the Ceará Water Resources Management Company (COGERH). At the international level, the collection of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was consulted.

Within the SRH collection, particular attention was given to cataloguing documents concerning water-use permits in force in 2010. The ordinances issued to each applicant specify the type of use, the authorized volume, the water source from which withdrawals were made, and the location of the undertaking (Ceará, 2010).

A newspaper archive was also compiled by cataloguing newspapers published during the same period. Two collections were used: the National Library’s digital collection and the physical collection of the Ceará State Public Library (BECE), located in Fortaleza. This procedure sought to capture the discourses and political positions of the class fractions and groups that actively participated in shaping the socio-ecological project that came to dominate the transformation of the Jaguaribe Valley’s hydrosocial cycle.

The systematized material was analyzed following the analytical indications provided by Moraes (2005a, b) for operationalizing the concepts of geographical ideology and territorial policies. The analysis identified three discursive strands, presented below, that emerged in the context of successive rounds of neoliberalization and converged in the formation of what is termed the geographical ideology of the private management of natural resources. This discursive framework underpinned the emerging socio-ecological project and guided state practices in the Jaguaribe Valley.

The geographical ideology of the private management of natural resources

We argue that three developments, rooted in the transition from the 1980s to the 1990s and extending into the early 2000s, contributed to the emergence of new discourses and political practices that redefined state action in northeastern Brazil generally and in the Jaguaribe Valley in particular. They were: 1) the discourse of the entrepreneurialization and privatization of irrigation policy; 2) the discourse of the neoliberal water order; and 3) the discourse of the “natural advantages” of the semi-arid Northeast-the emergence of the Fruit-Growing Consensus.

The convergence of these developments reveals the formation of a new geographical ideology that underpinned a socio-ecological project aimed at reshaping the geography of water in Brazil’s northeastern semi-arid region and, in particular, in the Jaguaribe Valley: the ideology of the private management of water resources, as systematized below.

The discourse of entrepreneurialization and privatization of irrigation policy

In the 1990s, the discourse of entrepreneurialization and privatization of irrigation gained renewed momentum. During this period, the neoliberal policy agenda was incorporated into the Brazilian state apparatus under the administrations of Fernando Collor de Mello (1990-1992) and the two terms of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-1998 and 1999-2002).

Over this period, known as the era of the “Fernandos,” irrigation policy underwent a round of neoliberalization (Albano, 2022), under strong pressure from international financial institutions (IFIs), which emerged as the principal actors shaping the hydro-agrarian policies being implemented in the Northeast (Albano, 2022), as documented below:

Private enterprise and agricultural technicians are now key actors in all irrigation projects (and settler resettlement schemes) promoted by DNOCS and Codevasf. The Irrigation Sector Review prepared by the federal government definitively abolished the prevailing settlement model (practiced in the Northeast until five years ago), under which projects were established on alluvial lands-lower-lying areas with high salinization rates, as in the Morada Nova project. To comply with World Bank requirements (the largest provider of funding for projects of this scale), DNOCS had to meet basic prerequisites: replace alluvial areas with plateaus and allocate irrigated areas so that 50% were occupied by settlers and the remaining 50% by agronomists, agricultural technicians, and entrepreneurs.

The first irrigation project developed under this innovative approach was Jaguaribe-Apodi. Of the planned 5,000 hectares, 2,500 ha are already under production, employing 320 irrigator families, who earn annual revenues of USD 1,000 per hectare. The entire project is budgeted at USD 60 million and is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The director-general of DNOCS reports that, probably before July, the bidding process will be launched for the admission of a group of 40 entrepreneurs into the project.

The Tabuleiro de Russas project has already been given the green light for construction to begin. According to Marques, USD 110 million will be invested over a two-year period. A total of 388 irrigators, 79 agricultural technicians, and an equal number of entrepreneurs will be settled across an area of 10,795 thousand ha, generating 10,000 direct jobs (Diário do Nordeste, 1993, p. 2, emphasis added).

It can therefore be inferred that, by the early 1990s, the neoliberalization of irrigation policy was advancing nationwide through the incorporation of new guidelines, most notably the definitive abolition of the “settlement” model. From this point onward, public irrigation schemes began to assume a different configuration, marked by the disappearance of the classic social figure of the “settler-irrigator.” Technical assistance subsequently came to be contracted from private organizations, which assumed responsibility for managing the irrigation schemes; moreover, irrigators began to be selected through new legal-political mechanisms-namely, “public bidding”-which enabled various segments of private capital to appropriate the land structure.

As the source also details, the two main irrigation projects designed for the Jaguaribe Valley during this period-Jaguaribe-Apodi and Tabuleiros de Russas-were conceived, redesigned, and territorialized within this new legal-political framework of neoliberal modernization, in which land, water, and labor power were transformed into businesses/commodities, intensifying the subsumption of human and non-human nature under the reproduction of capital (Souza, 2019).

These experiments in neoliberalization acquired their own institutional form during the first Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) administration, under the aegis of the Brasil em Ação Program, launched in August 1996, through the implementation of the Irrigated Perimeters Emancipation Program (PROEMA) and the establishment of the “New Irrigation Model”:

This new model seeks to promote and consolidate the sustainable development of irrigated and irrigable areas, by inducing private investment, generating employment and income, increasing exports, and strategically serving the domestic market.

[...]

Among its other objectives, the New Irrigation Model provides investment and operating credit and is concerned with the rational use of soil and water. It is also completing inherited unfinished works and restructuring government projects in the sector with the aim of freeing them from public oversight (Brasil, 1998, p. 11, emphasis added).

In essence, these measures brought to an end the former form-content of the public irrigation schemes conceived during the dictatorial regime under the Multi-Year Irrigation Program (PPI), introduced in 1971, and inaugurated a new era of federal irrigation policy characterized by the dominance of private capital, as detailed below:

With a view to developing a new model of irrigated agriculture, characterized by intensive and sustainable production, the following priorities were to be adopted: (a) the expansion of irrigated agriculture should be demand-driven, with private irrigation taking priority, while the role of the State could be restricted to providing the minimum infrastructure required to leverage private investment, including electricity grids and roads, and even water-intake and conveyance infrastructure when intended to serve a group of producers, with the corresponding costs to be recovered; (b) particular attention should be given to the rehabilitation (infrastructure recovery) of federal public irrigation projects (PIPFs), given its positive effects on productivity, water-use efficiency, and the reduction of environmental problems; (c) the “privatization” of PIPF management through the emancipation of all projects, to be undertaken after or concurrently with infrastructure rehabilitation; to this end, the establishment of Water User Associations should be encouraged, serving as the irrigators’ interlocutor with government agencies; responsibility for matters exclusively related to production (including technical assistance, credit, and marketing) should rest separately with Producers’ Associations/Cooperatives; both functions could be performed by a single organization when the PIPFs are relatively small; (d) recovery of operation and maintenance costs and part of the investments made in implementing the PIPFs through water-use charges reflecting both cost components, which the agencies refer to as k1 and k2; (e) given the shortage of public resources and the bureaucracy of the agencies responsible for irrigation, mobilization of private enterprise to invest in new high-potential irrigation schemes, such as the opportunities already identified in Salitre, Bahia, and Pontal, Pernambuco, both with estimated irrigable areas exceeding 80,000 hectares; (f) assessment of the performance of all settler and company plots located within the PIPFs, identifying the factors responsible for poor performance; plots not under cultivation should be transferred to new settlers and entrepreneurs, with amendments to the relevant legislation introduced if necessary; given the substantial investments made by society, the current situation is absurd, with irrigation agencies prevented from taking the appropriate measures to bring these plots into production [...] (Abib, 1994, p. 102-103, emphasis added).

The implementation of this new orientation was based on recovering public investments-through water-use charges and fees for the management of shared infrastructure-allocating plots to the private sector through public bidding with guaranteed individual land titles and incentives for the land market, as well as establishing private irrigation districts and developing projects that favored medium-sized and large enterprises. Taken together, these measures consolidated the entrepreneurialization and privatization of irrigation policy.

The discourse of the neoliberal water order

In the 1980s, international financial institutions, led by the World Bank, advanced a new front of neoliberalization. This time, the objective was to transform water into a “water resource,” that is, into a commodity, a business opportunity, and a natural asset endowed with economic value (Porto-Gonçalves, 2006a; Scantimburgo, 2013). While the previous section highlighted the articulation between IFIs and the Federal Government in the formulation and dissemination of the discourses that redefined irrigation policy, the field of water policy brought another political actor into play: State Governments. The triad of IFIs-Federal Government-State Governments thus became the principal disseminator of the discursive strategy underlying the neoliberal water order (Porto-Gonçalves, 2006a).

This process gained momentum in the 1980s with the formation of an “international environmental order” (Ribeiro, 2008), forged by a range of intellectual, political, and financial actors linked to the United Nations (UN) system. During this period, a diagnosis of natural-resource depletion became consolidated in the international political arena, prompting the development of governance strategies capable of proposing and implementing mechanisms for the “rational use” of natural elements. Such governance came to be conceived with the market as its privileged locus, to the detriment of a bureaucratized state apparatus that, according to the arguments advanced, was deemed incapable of responding to the challenges posed by the environmental crisis (Porto-Gonçalves, 2006a; Ribeiro, 2008; Scantimburgo, 2013).

Although the first formulations advocating a neoliberal approach to water policies can be traced to the 1980s (Ribeiro, 2008), it was at the Dublin Conference, held in January 1992, that this set of ideas assumed the character of a policy prescription, accompanied by a privatizing water-policy lexicon, as follows:

Principle No. 1: Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development, and the environment. [...].

Principle No. 2: Water management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners, and policymakers at all levels. [...].

Principle No. 3: Women play a significant role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water. [...].

Principle No. 4: Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good. [...]. Past failure to recognize the economic value of water has led to wasteful and environmentally damaging uses of the resource. Managing water as an economic good is an important means of achieving efficient and equitable use and of encouraging conservation and protection of the resource (Ribeiro, 2008, p. 80, emphasis added).

In these terms, the Dublin Declaration consolidated three principles that guided the (re)formulation of water policies worldwide: water scarcity; the conception of water as a natural resource endowed with economic value; and participation-neoliberal participation mediated through the market-embodied in the figure of the “user.” Surrounding this discourse of participation was an underlying intention to create space for corporations interested in establishing a “water market” to influence the formulation of water policies and, consequently, the reshaping of the geography of water on a global scale.

In Brazil, following the indications provided by Scantimburgo (2013) and an ANA publication (2002), this agenda took root within the federal state apparatus as early as the beginning of the 1980s, bringing to the political arena a debate over the need to establish a legal-institutional framework-a “National Water Resources Policy”-capable of reconciling economic development with the orderly and rational use of water as a resource.

The political actors who came to dominate this debate thus began to advance the following thesis: either Brazil established a “modern” water-governance system, or it would fail to integrate competitively into the ongoing process of neoliberal globalization. In other words, it became necessary to establish legal, technical, and economic mechanisms capable of ensuring water security and secure property rights over water to attract and expand private investment in Brazil.

Although political actors operating at the federal level had already promoted, during the 1980s, a series of initiatives aimed at materializing the UN-World Bank water agenda, including the innovations introduced by the 1988 Federal Constitution, a National Water Resources Policy was consolidated only in 1997, with the enactment of Law No. 9,433/1997 under the administration of then-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

This neoliberal water order, taking advantage of the distribution of powers established by the 1988 Constitution, nevertheless began to be internalized, in a pioneering and innovative manner, by certain state governments, as illustrated by the experiences of Ceará, Rio Grande do Sul, and São Paulo (ANA, 2002).

In Ceará, although embryonic efforts to assign a more prominent role to the state apparatus in water-related matters can be identified in the first half of the 1980s (Souza Filho, 2022), this agenda only acquired material form after a group of “businessmen-politicians” (Costa, 2005) came to state power.

This group was represented in the 1986 state elections by the young businessman Tasso Jereissati. His victory redefined both the composition and the internal hegemony of the state power block, relegating to a secondary position the interests of class fractions historically associated with the semi-arid complex (Furtado, 2009), including traditional sectors of the local urban-industrial economy.

Under a discourse structured around the grammar of “change” and “modernization,” the “Tasso Era” (1987-2002), which came to political power in 1987 and subsequently maintained its electoral hegemony through political successors and allies, redefined the direction of politics in Ceará in line with the demands imposed by the restructuring of capital taking place at both international and national scales. In other words, this period marked the beginning of a long cycle of “bourgeois hegemony” in Ceará, built through the incorporation and adaptation of neoliberal guidelines into the management of the state apparatus and, consequently, into the formulation and territorialization of socio-ecological projects that redefined the state’s accumulation dynamics under the hegemony of three sectors: large-scale industry, irrigated agribusiness, and mass tourism (Costa, 2005; Costilla; Nobre, 2011).

Thus, one of the first water-related spatial practices of the “Tasso Era” consisted of constructing new images and discourses concerning the socionatural dynamics of Ceará’s territory. Without denying the constraints imposed by hydroclimatic dynamics, and in an effort to position Ceará in the competition to attract investment, local political actors reformulated the discourse of drought (Costa, 2005), arguing that the limitations imposed by the state’s distinctive climatic and water conditions could be overcome through a modern policy of “water resources management.” In the words of Governor Tasso Jereissati (1990, p. 14): “The problem of drought in the Northeast is water management.”

This required the establishment of a legislative and institutional framework capable of enabling the state apparatus to implement such “water management” policies. A second round of state practices was thus inaugurated: the establishment-and continual reformulation-of an “Integrated Water Resources Management System.”

It was precisely in this initiative that the widely proclaimed pioneering, innovative, and modernizing character of the “Tasso Era” resided: the construction of a “New Water Policy for Ceará,” as recorded by the then Secretary of Water Resources, Hypérides Pereira de Macêdo (1992, emphasis added):

With this innovative approach, Ceará assumes a pioneering role in the Northeast in the planning and control of water resources, in contrast to a policy that for centuries had been conducted by federal agencies. [...]. At last, Ceará is taking the first step toward controlling hydraulic works, regulating water sources, and restoring the social role of public waters.

To plan and control water, successive governments of the “Tasso Era,” under strong World Bank influence (Aquino, 2019), established an institutional and regulatory framework that included the creation of the Secretariat of Water Resources and the Superintendency of Hydraulic Works (SOHIDRA), both in 1987; the State Water Resources Plan (PLANERH), in 1991; the State Water Resources Policy (PERH), in 1992; and the Ceará Water Resources Management Company (COGERH), in 1993. The responsibilities of the former Ceará Foundation for Meteorology and Artificial Rainfall, created in 1972, were also reformulated, and in 1987 it was renamed the Ceará Foundation for Meteorology and Water Resources (FUNCEME).

The political-ideological core of this institutional framework was the State Water Resources Policy, approved in 1992. This instrument clearly reveals the adherence of the “Tasso Era” to the grammar of the neoliberal water order. Under the PERH, water came to be regarded as “an economic good of significant value,” and its use was therefore subject to charges; the threefold principle of “integrated, decentralized, and participatory management” came to guide the operation of the State Water Resources System; the “water-use permit” was established as an instrument for regulating the “multiple and competing uses” of “water resources,” thereby determining who would be entitled to water; and this “natural resource” became incorporated into multiple strategies of “economic development” (Ceará, 1992).

Drawing on this discursive practice, the actors responsible for implementing the PERH also began to advocate a new round of hydraulic works aimed at increasing the complexity of the existing hydrosocial configuration. This initiative sought to ensure water security both for the fractions of capital already established in the state and for those to be attracted through a robust set of fiscal and infrastructure incentives, particularly by ensuring abundant-and low-cost-stocks of “water resources” at strategic locations across Ceará.

The “Tasso Era,” marked by a period of neoliberal ideological convergence among the State Government, the Federal Government, and IFIs-particularly the World Bank-contracted loans and promoted the financing, coordination, and implementation of a series of projects that increased the complexity of hydrotechnical systems across the state. Several principles and guidelines shaped this process: the design and location of new projects were to be based on “technical criteria” and economic rationality, in line with World Bank recommendations; reservoir waters, rivers, and groundwater reserves were to be used within a modern regulatory framework and managed according to the threefold principle of “integration, decentralization, and participation”; and, above all, the “multiple uses” of water were to prioritize the expansion of economic activities deemed profitable, in accordance with the interests of the class fractions that exercised hegemony within the power bloc.

Within this context, the Jaguaribe Valley was transformed into a kind of laboratory in which this neoliberal water order was most intensively assessed and consolidated through the management of its waters and their uses.

The discourse of viable nature and the emergence of the Fruit-Growing Consensus

The final discursive strand comprising the emerging geographical ideology of the private management of water resources reveals whose interests were served by the entrepreneurialization and privatization of irrigation policy, while also clarifying the actors and purposes toward which the neoliberal water order would selectively direct both stored waters and those circulating through the complex hydrotechnical configuration being implemented during the “Tasso Era.”

In other words, while an institutional and regulatory framework was being established to guarantee water security for the projected restructuring of productive dynamics-Industry-Agribusiness-Tourism-it was simultaneously necessary to disseminate two geographically framed ideologies: that of “Modern Ceará” (a state apparatus aligned with the neoliberal policy agenda) and that of “Viable Ceará” (a territory endowed with numerous “natural advantages”). The objective was to create an attractive environment for the territorialization of both domestic and international capital.

According to Castro (1995), the “change-oriented project” of the “Tasso Era” transformed the discourse of drought into a discourse of water or, to paraphrase the same author, transfigured the myth of necessity into a fable of water abundance, sustained by the grammar of modern, technological, and business-oriented water management.

Based on the inventory of sources from this period, the analysis identified that, beyond the promotion of the water dynamics produced under neoliberal guidance, other features of the semi-arid environment were elevated to the status of assets and incorporated into the region’s repertoire of “natural advantages,” as illustrated below:

Marcos Arzua-an entrepreneur from Frunorte - Frutas do Nordeste Ltda-states that “drought is not a scourge, but an asset for the Northeast.” This means that, when appropriate irrigation techniques are employed, dry regions favor the expansion of fruit growing. Intense solar radiation and high luminosity are extremely favorable to the ripening of fruits such as melon. In the Açu Valley, Rio Grande do Norte, melon completes its ripening cycle in 60 days, whereas melon grown in California, United States-which is highly valued in international markets for its internationally recognized quality standards-requires almost twice as long, approximately 115 days, to ripen (Mouteira, 1991, p. 20, emphasis added).

We have water and sun, the ingredients required for the development of modern agriculture. We have our reservoirs. We use only 2% of the water released from the Orós Reservoir for irrigation. The remaining 98% is lost to evaporation and flows into the sea. We have enormous potential. In the Jaguaribe Valley alone, we have the capacity to irrigate an area equivalent to the territory occupied by Israel (Diário do Nordeste, 1992, p. 4, emphasis added).

Alongside the promotion of the semi-arid region’s new “natural advantages,” the need to reassess which productive dynamics would best respond to the emerging discursive-institutional framework also gained momentum during the first half of the 1990s. The catalogued sources indicate that, despite the speed with which the state apparatus and its practices concerning irrigation and water were restructured, the beneficiaries of these measures-and the productive profile itself-had changed little between the end of developmentalist ideology and the initial rounds of neoliberalization, particularly in the northern semi-arid region and, more specifically, in the Jaguaribe Valley.

Rice cultivation, for example, continued to dominate agricultural production on the alluvial plains of the Jaguaribe Valley, while in the Jaguaribe-Apodi public irrigation scheme, already operating in the early 1990s, most of the cultivated area was occupied by beans, cotton, and corn (Souza Filho, 2022).

This situation, however, began to change in the late 1990s. Under the initial leadership of the federal state apparatus, the FHC administration launched the Program for the Support and Development of Irrigated Fruit Growing in the Northeast in 1997 as an integral component of the “New Irrigation Model.”

The catalogued sources indicate that “Irrigated Fruit Growing” was selected as the agricultural practice best suited to capitalize on the “natural advantages” and the emerging institutional framework, while also ensuring the integration of Brazil and the Northeast into global value chains, as expressed in the following excerpt:

With these advantages and the new irrigation model, the region will develop considerably. In fruit growing alone, the Northeast could produce 6 billion reais per year. Fruit production is the most profitable activity in the region’s irrigated areas, particularly grapes, mangoes, bananas, melons, and acerola. Chile, our neighbor here in Latin America, is already interested in a partnership with Brazil. Chileans have a strong international fruit-marketing network. However, because of the climate, they cannot produce year-round, nor do they grow the same fruits that we have in Brazil. That is where the Northeast comes in, with all its potential (Cardoso, 1996, p. 742, emphasis added).

This discourse drew support from the productive experience already underway in the “Petrolina-Juazeiro irrigation hub,” as well as on the Apodi Plateau (RN), particularly the role played by private companies that, by the early 1990s, were already exporting “tropical fruits,” such as melon, to European and US markets (Albano, 2022). The time had therefore come to extend these experiences, with direct support from the state apparatus, and transform the northeastern countryside into an export powerhouse, thereby making water use through irrigation profitable.

At the state level, support for “Irrigated Fruit Growing” acquired institutional form in 1999 with the creation of the Secretariat of Irrigated Agriculture (SEAGRI), which coordinated efforts to equip Ceará with a research, engineering, and regulatory system capable of restructuring agrarian and agricultural dynamics in selected areas according to the criteria of capitalist economic rationality. According to Cavalcante’s analysis (2020), this policy took concrete form with the enactment of the Ceará Irrigated Agriculture Program (PROCEAGRI), established by law in 2002. This program was responsible for “[...] placing Ceará on the global map of fruit exports as early as the 2000s” (Cavalcante, 2020, p. 87).

A scalar articulation can thus be identified between the State and Federal Governments and the class bloc in power in the conception and territorialization of a new socio-ecological project for Brazil’s northeastern semi-arid region, one that would come to be politically sustained by irrigated fruit growing. It should be noted in this regard that Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Tasso Jereissati were aligned with-or even at the forefront of-the geopolitical and productive transition underway at the turn of the twenty-first century, which would (re)position Latin America as a commodity-export platform.

It can therefore be argued that, during this period, and drawing on the debate initiated by Maristella Svampa (2019), a discursive formation emerged in the northeastern semi-arid region-the Fruit-Growing Consensus-whose purpose was to establish, and contest within the political arena, which management and production model would guide the expansion of the irrigated frontier and, consequently, integrate Ceará into neoliberal modernity.

By foregrounding a set of “natural advantages” of the semi-arid region-the climate, manufactured water abundance, and its geographical position in relation to foreign markets-this Consensus also identified who was best positioned to accomplish the mission of transforming the Northeast into a “fruit tiger” (Nordeste [...], 1997): irrigated agribusiness or, implicitly, fractions of large-scale agro-industrial capital of regional, national, and international origin.

In the Jaguaribe Valley, for example, this discursive arrangement acquired concrete form through the “Águas do Vale” program, launched in August 2001. It was during this period, we argue, that the socio-ecological project of irrigated fruit-growing agribusiness, underpinned by the geographical ideology of the private management of water resources, began to shape the region’s agrarian dynamics and, consequently, to establish hegemony over its geography of water.

Notes on the “Águas do Vale” program

This section examines how the reception of this new geographical ideology, the private management of water resources-under the dominance of the Fruit-Growing Consensus in the northeastern semi-arid region contributed to the establishment of a new water-use regime in the Jaguaribe Valley. The “Águas do Vale” program is taken as a symbolic landmark of this new phase in the region’s agrarian-water geography.

Several events that shaped the context in which the program emerged must also be considered. By the end of the 1990s, rice accounted for 45% of the irrigated area, followed by beans (21%), forage crops (10%), corn (6%), cotton (5%), bananas (5%), and other uses (8%). Most of these crops were irrigated using methods regarded as inefficient, particularly flood and furrow irrigation (Souza Filho, 2022).

In 2001, the region experienced an irregular rainy season, and water reserves, still recovering from the two droughts of the 1990s (1992-1993 and 1997-1998), once again fell to critical levels below existing demand. The Orós Reservoir held only 26% of its total storage capacity, while the Banabuiú Reservoir stood at just 8%. These two reservoirs were key components of the policy for maintaining perennial river flows in the region and, consequently, for sustaining the irrigated frontier (Souza Filho, 2022).

This context underpinned the assessment within the state apparatus that, under conditions of hydroclimatic variability, innovations were required in the implementation of hydro-agrarian policy. It became evident that policy needed not only to expand water “supply” through the construction of new reservoirs, but also to plan the management of “demand,” that is, to determine which uses and which class fractions would receive water.

The “Águas do Vale” program was thus established in response to the need to balance water supply and demand. Forged through coordination between the State Government, represented by COGERH-SEAGRI, the Federal Government, represented by ANA, and under the influence and supervision of the World Bank, the initiative institutionalized, operationalized, and disseminated the ideology of private water-resources management throughout the Jaguaribe Valley.

This model was operationalized through a system for controlling and regulating water use that included the registration of “users,” individualized measurement of water demand, mandatory water-use permits, and the establishment of charges for water use. According to ANA’s official discourse (2001), these measures sought to reduce waste and encourage the adoption of more efficient irrigation methods under the paradigm of “producing more with less water.”

The “Águas do Vale” program also sought to raise funds to compensate rice producers who suspended production under those conditions of “scarcity.” This consolidated the narrative that fruit growing was more strategic than “traditional” crops, particularly rice cultivation (Figure 2), based on the combined consideration of indicators such as water consumption, production value, and job creation under conditions of water scarcity (drought).

Figure 2:
Comparison between rice cultivation and fruit growing - Águas do Vale (2001).

In this sense, the “Águas do Vale” program signaled the state apparatus’s interest in inducing a transition among the beneficiaries of irrigation and water policies-from the semi-arid complex (Furtado, 2009) toward the hegemony of irrigated fruit-growing agribusiness (Cavalcante, 2020). In other words, by aligning with, reworking, and disseminating the threefold discourse of neoliberal modernization in the Jaguaribe Valley, the “Tasso Era” drove a selective process of creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1982) in relation to the agrarian-water dynamics inherited from the dictatorial period.

Public irrigation schemes originally conceived to accommodate the settler-irrigator were transformed into privatized schemes dominated by medium- and large-scale irrigated agribusiness; the irrigated frontier, previously occupied by traditional crops, underwent a restructuring of its productive profile, giving rise to a landscape of tropical fruit growing; the cattle-cotton-cashew-carnauba latifundium was modernized or sold to fractions of agro-industrial capital attracted to the region by the fable of abundance and the neoliberal water order; the discourse of the drought industry was transformed into a discourse of the water industry; and, finally, portions of peasant territories, subjected to successive rounds of expropriation, were converted into territories of irrigated fruit-growing agribusiness.

These transitions were accompanied by increasing complexity in the hydrosocial configuration of the Jaguaribe Valley. Between 1987 and 2002, during the “Tasso Era,” the region experienced a proliferation of hydrotechnical systems, notably the construction and inauguration of the Castanhão Reservoir, which added more than 6.7 billion cubic meters to water-storage capacity; two water-transfer axes-the Canal do Trabalhador in 1993 and the beginning of construction of the Eixão das Águas in 2002; the previously mentioned Jaguaribe-Apodi (PIJA) public irrigation scheme in 1989 and Tabuleiros de Russas (PITR) in 2002; as well as the large-scale drilling of wells into the Jandaíra-Açu aquifers on the Apodi Plateau. A complex system of water circulation was thereby established-a reservoir-river-canal-groundwater system-which provided the material foundation for the fable of water abundance and drove the expansion of the Fruit-Growing Consensus. A new geography of water thus emerged in the Jaguaribe Valley, dominated by irrigated fruit-growing agribusiness.

Under these conditions, the manufactured abundance of water was hegemonically appropriated by fractions of agrarian capital, particularly national and multinational corporations (Cavalcante, 2020). At the beginning of the 2000s, two irrigated fruit-growing frontiers emerged in the region:

• 1) Apodi Plateau: through the territorialization of agribusiness firms within the Jaguaribe-Apodi irrigation scheme, concentrating access to perennialized surface waters or exploiting water from the Jandaíra-Açu aquifers. To illustrate the scale of this water demand, the multinational company Del Monte Fresh Produce Brasil Ltda can be cited: in 2010, it produced melon, pineapple, and banana and held a water-use permit authorizing annual withdrawals of 6,323,486 m³/year from 34 deep wells. The PIJA, where banana production predominated, was authorized to use 106,887,918 m³/year (Ceará, 2010).

• 2) Tabuleiros de Russas: through the territorialization of irrigated agribusiness within the Tabuleiros de Russas irrigation scheme, capturing perennialized surface waters. The PITR administration held a water-use permit for 5,261,351.07 m³/year, primarily supporting melon and banana-growing areas (Ceará, 2010).

To convey the scale of the combined volume authorized through water-use permits by the Ceará State Secretariat of Water Resources-118,472,755.07 m³/year-we propose a comparison with the storage capacity of the plate cistern, a social technology used for water supply, which stores 16,000 liters. A simple calculation shows that the annual water demand of the new fruit-growing frontier is equivalent to the volume stored in more than 7.4 million cisterns.

Finally, based on the data systematized by Cavalcante (2020), the intensification and expansion of the irrigated fruit-growing frontier rapidly transformed the Jaguaribe Valley into a fruit-export hub serving international markets; in other words, the transformed waters were indirectly drained, via shipping containers, to supermarket shelves in Europe and the United States.

These water-intensive frontiers gave rise to a new type of latifundium in the region: the water latifundium. Whereas under the semi-arid complex (Furtado, 2009) water was enclosed within private property through the privatization of reservoir construction in the service of livestock production, under the neoliberal water order these enclosures came to take the form of regulatory and engineering systems that authorize and ensure the movement of water over long distances until it is captured and monopolized by fruit-growing corporations.

Along these new water pathways, however, the figure of the “waterless” (Porto-Gonçalves, 2006a,b) was also reconfigured, giving rise to the following realities: 1) peasant communities living alongside reservoirs and water-transfer axes but lacking rights to use the water; 2) peasant communities expropriated by the territorialization of hydrotechnical systems and reterritorialized in precarious subspaces without access to water, giving rise to a popular saying in the region: “when the water arrives, we are expelled”; 3) peasant communities whose water sources, particularly wells, have been depleted by the high water demand associated with fruit production, as well as by a chemical-dependent agricultural model that has led to pesticide contamination of this resource essential to human reproduction.

Final remarks

The analysis demonstrates that the Fruit-Growing Consensus represented more than a technical or productive shift; it consolidated a comprehensive socio-ecological project capable of profoundly reorganizing the relationship among the State, capital, and water in the Jaguaribe Valley. The articulation among the entrepreneurialization of irrigation, the neoliberal water order, and the narrative of the semi-arid region’s “natural advantages” constituted the ideological foundation that enabled the reconfiguration of the hydrosocial cycle. This discursive framework legitimized new state practices, enabled the restructuring of hydrotechnical systems, and redefined which groups were positioned to access-and profit from-the region’s waters.

In this process, the State did more than adjust management mechanisms; it drove a selective reordering of agrarian dynamics. By replacing productive profiles inherited from the semi-arid complex with an irrigated frontier aligned with the requirements of export-oriented agribusiness, a process of creative destruction was set in motion that restructured territories, water networks, and patterns of land use. The “Águas do Vale” program epitomized this transition by regulating users, establishing economic criteria for prioritization, and redirecting water policy toward a business logic, thereby transforming water into a commodity, and regulating its circulation according to profitability criteria.

This conjuncture enabled the formation of multiple water latifundia, supported by sophisticated hydrosocial infrastructures for water capture, conveyance, and storage. At the same time, the population of the “waterless” expanded, encompassing communities that, despite being surrounded by reservoirs, canals, and deep wells, were excluded from the flows that preferentially supplied irrigated fruit growing. As water traveled long distances to supply global markets, territories marked by manufactured scarcity multiplied.

Finally, it should be emphasized that this socio-ecological project-and its dispossessive power-intensified around the turn of the 2000s, reaching its peak during the 2012 drought. During this period, water injustices became even more visible and acute, revealing the depth of the inequalities inscribed in the contemporary geography of water in the Jaguaribe Valley.

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How to cite this article

ALMEIDA, Diego Gadelha. The Emergence of the Fruit-Growing Consensus in the Jaguaribe Valley (Ceará - Brazil) and the Imposition of a New Water-Use Regime. Revista NERA, v. 29, n. 1, e11269, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-675520262911269en.

Research data availability statement

Regarding the availability of research data, the authors of the manuscript state that: The full dataset supporting the results of this study is included within the article itself.

Edited by

This article was edited by Lorena Izá Pereira and Camila Ferracini Origuela.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Oct 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  27 Nov 2025
• Reviewed
  02 Apr 2026
• Accepted
  02 July 2026