The Impact of Cerrado Development: Stable Food Supply and Socially Inclusive Development with Value Chains

Abstract

The extraordinary development of Cerrado agriculture led to a variety of results. Section 4.1 will discuss its contribution to the stability of the food supply, especially in terms of soybeans and corn, as well as the improvement of global food security. At the same time, Cerrado agriculture enabled the development of food value chains both inside and outside the Cerrado region and increased employment opportunities throughout the area. Inclusive and dynamic growth took place in the region, all of which will be discussed in Section 4.2. Section 4.3 will examine how this drew people to the inland of Brazil from the South and Northeast regions, reducing the excessive concentration of economic activities and population in the south of the country. This process is related to socially inclusive development in Brazil, whereby poverty has been significantly reduced and the income gap between rich and poor has considerably narrowed in the past decade, as discussed in Section 4.4. Section 4.5 will discuss how food security and lower food prices contributed to the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Brazil, and Section 4.6 will examine how the expansion of value chains, critical to the creation of jobs and for socially inclusive development, was attained in the Cerrado region. Finally, Section 4.7 will present concluding remarks.