AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITY, LABOR AND REGIONAL UNEQUALlTY IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The working conditions in the Brazilian countryside and the possibilities to integrate the working population in the agricultura I activities have changed in the two last decades of the XX century. And so have the agricultural structure and the forms of insertion in the rural labor market changed. The objective of this article is to discusssome issues related to the latest evolution of agriculture and the situation of labor market in the Brazilian countryside. It will specially focus on regional unequal conditions. Three main steps are followed in the article. A brief economic outlookof Brazilian agriculture will be shown first, focusing on the sector performancein the last years on the productive structure in the countryside, and the impact ofmodern practices in the agricultural field. After that, the employment evolution andthe agricultural income produced out of the changes in the field will be analyzed.Following that, general information on specific characteristics of rural workersaccording to 2003 PNAD (onal research by home sampling) will be shown,pointing out differences between thirteen selected states. The article tries to point out that the modernization of agriculture in Brazil did not result in overcoming the most visible traces of precarious job occupations of countryside people, and it demonstrates that differences between the states related to the rural workers' profile point to the need to do a diagnosis of the main problems, which would be a helpful contribution to the debate about unequal developrnent in the country.