A Case Study on Land Property Concentration on the Brazilian Eastern Amazon Frontier in the 1990s

摘要

This paper analyzes the process of land property concentration in the major frontier region of the Brazilian Eastern Amazon. Since the late 1960s, the Brazilian Amazon has experienced large development projects that have led to rapid population growth and deforestation. In the 1980s, many spontaneous settlements were established by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), and land redistribution became one of the central issues of Brazilian development. However, the population growth stalled in the 1990s, and farm turnover and associated land property concentration started to be observed. Although property rights were indicated as major institutions for effective land redistribution in previous literature, the differences in property rights and the influence were not explained in relation to the property concentration. In order to determine how the property rights institutions promote the process of land property concentration, survey data were collected during the period of July-September, 2000 through a small farmers' organization in a frontier settlement called Grotao dos Caboclos in the southeastern part of Para State, in the Brazilian Eastern Amazon. The results showed that although cattle ranching was the dominant land use in the study area, settlers without definitive land titles (posseiros) tended to move to forestlands to conduct slash-and-burn agriculture. Proprietors (settlers with definitive land titles) who were fully committed to cattle ranching accumulated capital by buying out the posseiros' cleared land. The study suggests that it is essential to provide definitive land titles and technical support to posseiros so that they can have more incentives to utilize their cleared pastureland.