Abstract

This article presents a review of current literature and debates on Brazilian agriculture, identifying three basic approaches — the articulation view, the classical proletarianisation inter-pretation and analyses which take as their starting point the concept of the agroindustrial complex. There follows the outlines of a general critique of each approach together with an alternative framework for analyzing rural structures. In the final section an attempt is made to synthesize the principal tendencies restructuring Brazilian agriculture both regionally and in terms of a typology of the principal forms of production.