Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
In two decades, Brazil has shed the image of a stagnant agrarian state and emerged as one of the world's largest agricultural exporters. The price of this metamorphosis has come high: land, resource, and capital concentration; massive rural-urban migration; shortfalls in domestic food supply; and ecological deterioration along the expanding agricultural frontier. Major transformations in the structure of agricultural production have accompanied these changes, and they have led to new patterns in the organization of agricultural work and associated social relations in production. Perhaps the most visible social product of agricultural modernization has been the temporary wage laborer, known commonly in Brazil as the boia fria.