Description
The economic and political rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and Middle-Income Countries (MICs) have important implications for global agrarian transformation.These emerging economies are undergoing profound changes as key sites of the production, circulation, and consumption of agricultural commodities; hosts to abundant cheap labour and natural resources; and home to growing numbers of both poor but also, increasingly, affluent consumers. Separately and together these countries are shaping international development agendas both as partners in and potential alternatives to the development paradigms promoted by the established hubs of global capital in the North Atlantic and by dominant international financial institutions. Collectively, the chapters in this book show the significance of BRICS countries in reshaping agro-food systems at the national and regional level as well as their global significance. As they export their own farming and production systems across different contexts, though, the outcomes are contingent and success is not assured. At the same time, BRICS may represent a continuation rather than an alternative to the development paradigms of the Global North.
The chapters were originally published in a special issue of Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal.
Table of Contents
1. The rise of BRICS: implications for global agrarian transformation
Ben M. McKay, Ruth Hall & Juan Liu
2. China and Latin America: towards a new consensus of resource control?
Ben M. McKay, Alberto Alonso-Fradejas, Zoe W. Brent, Sérgio Sauer & Yunan Xu
3. Chinese agrarian capitalism in the Russian Far East
Jiayi Zhou
4. ‘Don’t stop the mill’: South African capital and agrarian change in Tanzania
Giuliano Martiniello
5. ‘Export or die’: the rise of Brazil as an agribusiness powerhouse
Daniela Andrade
6. Utopian visions of contemporary rural-urban Russia
Alexander Mikhailovich Nikulin & Irina Vladimirovna Trotsuk
7. Growing South-South agribusiness connections: Brazil’s policy coalitions reach Southern Africa
Carolina Milhorance
8. South African supermarket expansion in sub-Saharan Africa
Melodie Campbell
9. Brazil and China: the agribusiness connection in the Southern Cone context
John Wilkinson, Valdemar João Wesz Junior & Anna Rosa Maria Lopane
