Real Estate Caipira: investimentos em terras pelo Brookfield Asset Management no Brasil

Abstract

The 2008 financial crisis is a landmark and a consequence of the progressive financialization of the economic and social sectors on a global level, which has spread and reorganized since the 1970s, with the rise of finance-driven neoliberalism. However, it is from the 2000s onwards that there is an even greater operation of financial capital, particularly the foreign financial capital from non-bank private financial institutions in fostering the expansion of Brazilian agribusiness. It occurred either from financing and offering credit to agro-industrial capital, or from buying or renting and controlling land in the country. This dissertation problematizes the new disputes that are being imposed on the Brazilian rural in which it is possible to consider a substantial investment of foreign institutional investors allied with the large agroindustrial capital. Thus, the object of our analysis was a set of actions and financial strategies for the acquisition and control of agricultural land in Brazil by the Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management, considered one of the global leaders in alternative investments, and whose investments has in the country its main destination since 1899. The main justification for the development of this research was, in the first instance, to highlight the centrality that the land has been gaining in the international financial operations. In a second moment, the fact that we chose the fund starts from the conjecture that it is a relevant and symbolic foreign actor in the light of studies of the recent process of global land grabbing and the financing of land in Brazil, not only because of its performance but also because we understand that, with the recent changes that the Brazilian field and agriculture have gone through in a context of increasing financing and market globalization, it is difficult to find funds that have as much business experience in the country. The methodological strategy was based on a case study based on a qualitative approach of collecting and analyzing the company's data, reports and documents. The main newspapers and digital platforms that deal with agribusiness financing were also consulted. We find that agricultural lands are a vital source for Brookfield's economic and financial activity, and present “windows of opportunity” for the de-standardization of its asset portfolio and significant returns from production and speculative dynamics. We further note that the fund's investment on agricultural land is linked to a global macroeconomic process, namely the commodities boom, the raise in food prices in the global market, the emergence of new energy sources and the opportunities that they find in the relationship with the Brazilian State.