The
objective of this paper is to present and discuss the Brazilian experience in
the adjustment process that agriculture hat to face in moving from an
Import-Substituting Industrialization (ISI) policies which discriminated
severely against agriculture to a more open trade regime. This paper emphasizes
the nature of the adjustment problems that Brazil faced as it made this
transition. For nearly three decades Brazil pursued an ISI policy. Their
consequences will be shortly reviewed in this paper. Emphasis will also be
placed in the problems of management of a modern agriculture under
macroeconomic stabilization.
For
the purposes of this paper scattered evidence has been gathered and new
empirical evidence has been generated to show the core of the ISI policies,
their consequences, the reforms adopted, after this model has been exhausted,
and the impact of all the reforms on a Brazil’s booming agriculture. The most
important reforms, towards macroeconomic stabilization and trade liberalization
created a series of difficulties for agriculture. Most of them already existed
in the past. They were only magnified by the reforms. Other just appeared in
the transition period from “ancient régime” to a modern agriculture in Brazil.
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