In the agrarian space, there are several types of properties. Some of them are so big that we can't see their end; others are very small, so we can easily see their size. In some places, there are some types of land organization, with a lot of land in the hands of families or, in other cases, a lot of land owned by large and famous producers.
THE land structure it refers precisely to the characteristics of size and organization of the agrarian space, which allows us to better understand how rural life works.
As for the size of land in rural areas, we can divide them into latifundios and minifundios.
You latifundia they are the large private land holdings. In this type of location, agriculture generally follows a modern production system, with a large amount of machinery and technological devices to control and improve the production process.
You smallholdings are the small properties of land, generally used for family or collective production, involving or families that have always lived in the countryside or agrarian social movements, such as the MST (Movimento dos Sem-Terra).
In Brazil, there is some questioning on the part of many in relation to the agrarian structure. This is because most private rural properties in the country are minifundios, but they occupy a much smaller area. Look:
Table of Land Structure in Brazil*
Reading the table above, we can see that there is a huge amount of small properties in Brazil. Adding the lands that have up to 100 hectares, we have almost 80% of the total existing in the entire country, however, together, these lands do not occupy 20% of the total rural space. Meanwhile, the large latifundia occupy most of it even though they exist in smaller amounts.
This means that there is a lot of land in the hands of few people, which represents the high degree of land concentration in Brazil. This exists due to the historical occupation of our territory, from the period of colonization to the times that followed, when the predominance of large landholdings was privileged.
Faced with this issue, there are numerous social movements fighting for Agrarian Reform, which would aim precisely at redistributing land in the country. But this is not an easy thing to happen, as it depends on other issues, such as production and changes in the country's consumption and export cycles.
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* Source: IBGE, Censo Agropecuário.
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
