Reforma agrária e desenvolvimento econômico

Resumo

The arguments of this paper are:

A. the agricultural sector can contribute to economic development;

B. in order todo this,it is necessary toincrease labor and land productivitys and

C. the criteria or goals to selactthe reforms should aim at those which are going to increase productivity.

Reforms, by definition, involve a group action, usually a government.

Historically the motives for agrarian reform have been the following:

1. economic motives;

2. political motives;

3. social motives; and

4. equalitarian motives.

The paper reviews agrarian on the basis of economic motive, under the presupposition that reforms are necessary in order to obtain a more efficient utilization of economic resources, aiming at obtaining a higher rate of economic growth.

conomic growth or development deals with increases in per capita. income, measured in average terms for all society members. The economic development process consists of the overall transformation of an economy characterized by abundance of labor and extreme capital shortage to one where capital becomes more abundant and relatively scarcer.

The agricultural sector can supply an important contribution to economic development and the developmental resources should be applied in the industrial sector as well as in the agricultural sector. Failure of agriculture to develop parallelly with industrial sector will have as an effect of obtructing, throughout the country, a self-sufficient economic development rate.

Increases inagricultural prodution, through increases inland labor productivity, may contribute to development in at least five ways:

1. liberation of labor to non-agricultural sectors;

2. as a savings source or capital build-up for overall economy:

3. manufacturing food for lower prices, being an increase of actural income;

4, promoting markets for products obtained in non-agricultural sector; and

5. as exchange revenue sources.

Basically, resource productivity can be increased in four ways:

1. using more efficient resource combinations;

2. increasing the amount of aused resource, in relation to another;

3. reducing risk, and

4. adopting a higher technological level.

With a base on these four ways toincrease produtivity, We can group the agrarian reforms which will increase agriculture productivity and, therefore, will amplify the contribution of this sector in order to obtain a higher economic development rate in Brazil, in four classes:

1. changes in the way in which element exercices control on the land or changes in systems of ownership, leasing or other means of exploitation;

2. programs for reducing or transferring risks;

3. improvements in the markets of production factors; and

4. establishement of institutions for production and dissemination of new knowledge.

Severalaspects have been omitted in this work. In general, intangible cases have been avoided.This means thatany potential increase in motivation, that may arise from the fact of owning land or latent motivations originating from education etc. have been ignored. The attitude of ignoring them only introduces the idea that such cases canhardly be dealt withunder analytical bases.