A intervenção no mercado de terras rurais no Brasil: um estudo sobre o crédito fundiário e o imposto territorial rural no período 1997-2002

Abstract

The thesis has for objective to study the instruments of intervention in the land market used by the Brazilian government in the period 1997-2002, and that were the concession of credit for the purchase of land and the taxation of agricultural land (the ITR). The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibilities and limitations of these instruments as mechanisms of increasing the access to the land by the rural landless workers as well as by the small farmers endowed with insufficient land. The central question underlying the analysis presented is to what extent such instruments were sufficient to serve effectively as substitutes of the traditional process of agrarian reform, centered on land redistribution. This analysis is based on a bibliographic survey covering the theories of the agricultural land markets and also of the agricultural land taxation, in both cases focusing on the Brazilian case. However, the thesis extends itself also to the experiences of some Latin American countries in what matters the experiences with the new agrarian reform policy tools adopted in Brazil in the period under analysis. The empirical analysis presented in the thesis used extensively the following data sources: 1) the Cadastro de Imóveis Rurais of INCRA, accompanied by the respective Estatísticas Cadastrais , both of them relative to 1998; 2) the 1995-96 Agricultural Census of IBGE, and, in particular, the special tabulations of this Census generated for the Project of Technical Cooperation INCRA/FAO; 3) consolidated listing of the "Cédula da Terra" Program (PCT) and report on the families benefited by the PCT and Land Bank, both of them provided by the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), including, respectively, the periods 1997-2002 , 2000-2004 and 1999-2004; 4) report with tables showing the areas declared of social interest for the purpose of land reform, and report on the farms that were expropriated for the purpose of agrarian reform, both of them provided by INCRA, covering, respectively, the periods 1964-1985 and 1979-2002. The arguments developed in the thesis are based, also, on data on agricultural land prices collected by Getulio Vargas Foundation (covering the period 1982-1998); Statistics on Land Taxes of INCRA, for the periods 1975- 1978 and 1982-1989; Statistics relative to the ITR profile, relative to 1997, furnished by the Secretaria da Receita Federal (SRF); and Statistics on the revenues administered by the SRF, for the period 1990-2001. The study concludes that, contrary to what has been propagated by its defenders, the new agrarian reform instruments, implemented by the country in the period under analysis, were not capable of generating an effective increase in the access to the land by the small producer in Brazil. In addition, the analysis of relevant aspects of the institutional reality of the rural land markets in Brazil indicates that these instruments, at least in the form that they were conceived, would not be capable of promoting a significant change in our agrarian structure.