The Jeitinho Estrangeiro: Foreign Investors, Brazilian Regulators, and Control over Farmland

The global rush for land has provoked diverse policy responses from host countries. While some governments are facilitating "land grabs" within their borders, others have restricted land acquisitions by foreigners. Drawing from the Brazilian case, I argue that such restrictive regulations may be limited in their effectiveness because they apply a state-centric geopolitical logic to a threat that is largely de-territorialized and financialized. The Brazilian government reacted to fears about land grabbing by reinstating a legal framework from the 1970s that focuses on the threat that foreigners pose to national sovereignty. This measure dampened international enthusiasm for Brazilian land, but it also triggered companies to begin searching for legal ways to get around the restrictions, often by exploiting the mismatch between the fungibility of global capital and the rigidity of the foreign/domestic dichotomy. I suggest that the semi-permeability of the new restrictions may present an opportunity for the Brazilian government to balance its conflicting commitments to smallholder farmers and export-oriented agribusiness. Regulations focused on foreign threats may be politically effective even as they impose an outdated conceptual framework on a far more complex reality.