Building Food Markets as a Method for Confronting the Rise of Authoritarian Populism: How the New Political Regime Has Forced Rural Movements to Create New Action Repertoires in Southern Brazil

Rural Movements, Repertoires, And Political Regimes In Brazil

In recent decades, the literature on social movements made considerable progress with regards to understanding how contentious politics functions in various contexts (Tilly and Tarrow, 2015). These studies focused on the dynamic between actors, their actions/claims, and the opportunity structures of each political regime with which they engaged. In this discussion, the concept of an “action repertoire” became widely used. It refers to “the limited, familiar, historically created arrays of claim-making performances that under most circumstances greatly circumscribe the means by which people engage in contentious politics” (Tilly, 2006: vii). It was assumed that these groups had some sort of claim, even if these claims were not always directed towards the state.

The repertoire(s) can vary according to the political regime in question. These repertoires are seen as “regular relations among governments, established political actors, challengers, and outside political actors including other governments” (Tilly and Tarrow, 2015: 49). The repertoires differ in terms of governmental capacity – the degree to which government actions affect the population, industries, and resources within its territory – and level of democracy – the degree in which people have equal rights to exert influence on the government and receive protection from arbitrary action (Tilly, 2006: 21). Therefore, mass public protests are rare in regimes with a low level of democracy, where claims are made by through other types of repertoires. Political actors that make their claims through collective action repertoires are labelled social movements, understood as “networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared, collective identities” (Diani, 2003). ¹

We will now describe how these movements were created in the context of the various political regimes seen throughout Brazil’s history. In 1963, CONTAG, the oldest of the three movements analyzed in this article, was created. Tilly’s (2006) analytical model will serve as the standard for differentiating between the Brazilian political regimes. These regimes differ in their degree of democracy and government control. To define each regime, we used as reference the term “political project,” concieved as a “set of beliefs, interests, worldviews [as well as] representations about what life should be in a society that guides the political behavior of different subjects” (Dagnino, Oliveira, and Panfichi, 2006: 38). Afterwards, we determined the main political project within the governments of each regime. It was in this way that we identified four regimes: Authoritarian; Neoliberal; Participatory/Democratic; and Populist Authoritarian.

Based on this characterization, we analyzed the repertoires that distinguished the three movements from each other within each of these regimes. The goal was to explore the differences as well as the profound changes that took place in the political strategies adopted by each movement. An authoritarian political regime began with the establishment of military dictatorship in Brazil in 1964. This dictatorship was characterized by a low degree of democracy and a high degree of government control, especially with regards to political and social repression. From an economic perspective, this regime was known for implementing an exclusionary type of agricultural modernization. This policy was associated with what became known as the “Green Revolution.” Rural leaders who vigorously opposed this policy were imprisoned and/or tortured. As a result, there was not the slightest possibility for public/collective protests, since these leaders were stripped of civil and political rights. In this context, the work of ministries led by the Catholic Church was fundamental for collective action. Liberation Theology ² provided a space for resistance where union leaders could receive training, organize, and articulate their claims.

During the military regime, rural unions gave rural workers an institutional channel through which to express their claims. CONTAG offered to represent these laborers in their fight for labor and social rights and to as a mediator with the government when it came to demanding access to land and state institutions (Sigaud, 2015). The confederation itself (which was established one year before the military coup during a time when rural land conflicts were gaining ground in Brazil’s Northeast) was an opportunity for direct intervention by the Brazilian government. It ended up turning into a sort of “arm of the state,” used by the regime to enforce its social policies. For example, it was through local unions that Brazilian farmers were able to access public health services.

The transition to democracy and the establishment of a neoliberal political regime began in the mid-1980s with the drafting of a new constitution that included social rights. This process culminated in the election of a neoliberal government. The new political regime was characterized by a reduction in the degree of government control and an expansion in the degree of democracy. The MST was founded in 1984 at a time where civil rights and opportunities for collective action were starting to reemerge in Brazil. The organization’s social bases were organized by Catholic ministries and buttressed by farmers and rural workers expelled from their lands by policies implemented by the military regime to modernize Brazilian agriculture. These groups felt that the official unions did not adequately represent their demands, especially for land reform.

Whereas CONTAG chose to serve as the official representative of a large segment of rural workers by interacting with the Brazilian state through institutional channels, the MST’s main agenda centered around land reform. At first, the MST acted “outside” institutional bodies, adopting a confrontational stance towards the Brazilian government through the use of mass and visible occupations of rural properties (Muñoz, 2019). This practice was followed by the establishment of camps that popularized the practice of land occupation as an important element in the fight for land reform. This, in turn, created an official terminology for claiming land in Brazil, including terms such as forma acampamento or “camp method” (Sigaud, 2015). ³ Demands for family farming also arose during the neoliberal regime. This was a sociopolitical category that, until that time, had not formed part of the ideology that the Brazilian state used to formulate policy. CONTAG played a fundamental role in this process by making use primarily of interaction repertoires. These included an “outreach policy” as well as holding positions of public office (Abers, Serafim, and Tatagiba, 2014).

While heavily influenced in the past by political leaders from Brazil’s Northeast, where their union base maintained an agenda based on access to land, CONTAG found itself controlled by political groups from southern Brazil starting in the 1990s. In the South, the fight for land reform was already the MST’s central political demand, but was virtually outside of the agendas adopted by unions representing rural workers at the time. This change not only led to CONTAG prioritizing agricultural policies in its agenda, but also to the transformation of “family farming” into a new sociopolitical identity (Grisa and Schneider, 2014). Furthermore, these shifts resulted in the creation of the Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (National Program to Strengthen Family Farming, Pronaf) in 1996 and the Ministério de Desenvolvimento Agrário (Ministry of Agrarian Development, MDA) in 1999. CONTAG tried legitimize and establish a positive image of family farming while also working in conjunction with government interests. It sought to instill an image of family farming as a dynamic and productive sector that was integrated with modern markets for agricultural commodities (Picolotto, 2018). This image contrasted with the insecurity and poverty that plagued rural workers and small-scale agricultural production in Brazil.

Establishing this image had direct implications for the activities of Brazilian rural unions, producing internal divisions that led to the creation of other organizations. These included the Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura Familiar da Região Sul (Southern Federation for Workers in Family Farming, Fetraf-Sul) who competed with CONTAG to represent local unions on a national stage (Picolotto, 2018). At the center of this conflict was an opposition to the agricultural expansion project supported by the dominant political coalition within CONTAG. This same project was based on the image of a modernized family farming sector in Brazil. Although the MST criticized this project for abandoning a more radical agenda for land reform, organizations with ties to this growing agroecological movement continued to question the socioenvironmental impacts of family farming policies (Weid, 2010: 4).

Rede Ecovida was created in 1997 with the goal of establishing a network between movements and organizations with different systems and interests. The organization itself constitutes one of the main manifestations of the agroecology movement in Brazil. The network’s origins lie in critiques by local organizations (supported by churches and NGOs) of the environmental damage produced by modern agriculture, which was heavily favored by interventionist policies at the time. Among Ecovida’s most important innovations was their decentralized and horizontal structure, autonomy for members to pursue different goals, visibility for actors with low organizational and financial capacity, and creating a strategic repertoire based on the organization’s interactions with the Brazilian state. This interaction can be defined as a colaboração crítica or “critical collaboration,” evidenced by the fact that Ecovida representatives became active participants in public spaces that had a say in the management of public policies (even though these representatives were among the main critics of these same policies) (Niederle et al., 2022).

Even at the end of the neoliberal regime, interaction repertoires (Abers, Serafim, and Tatagiba, 2014) that were used to advance the agendas of rural organizations incorporated a patchwork of public and collective performances, such as land occupations and marches. These performances were connected to more institutional actions, such as formal mediation, participating in the management and implementation of public policies, acting alongside legislatures, and occupying spaces within participatory institutions.

The subsequent stage was characterized by the creation of a democratic/participatory political regime. The critical turning point was the rise of a political coalition led by the Workers’ Party that came to dominate the federal government in 2003. The expansion of public spaces enabled this coalition to increase the level of democracy and allowed topics historically excluded from Brazilian policies to be discussed openly (Avritzer, 2017). During this regime, the standard of interaction between rural movements and state was mostly characterized by a combination of policies geared towards collective action and outreach strategies. Public collective campaigns were used either to start negotiations or to pressure institutions so improve the position of rural movements in already existing negotiations (demanding a larger budget allocation for a certain policy, for example) (Abers, Serafim, and Tatagiba, 2014). However, after the first two years of Lula da Silva’s term, there was an increase in the participation of social leaders within state institutions. This coincided with a decrease in the use of certain collective strategies, such as those involving land occupations. This suggests that these movements became less confrontational. This does not necessarily mean they were any less efficient in advancing an agenda based on claims from rural groups and organizations (Penna, 2015).

Although the government displayed a certain hesitancy regarding a policy of founding new settlements, notable progress was made on family farming. This agenda skillfully allied with an agenda of food and nutritional security, which was seen as a priority by the PT government under Lula. This set the stage for a new generation of public policies based on a strategy for the social construction of markets (Grisa and Schneider, 2014). The strengthening of the institutional markets (Schneider, 2016) not only went hand in hand with less confrontational actions, but it also represented a new form of waging political campaigns. The markets served as a point of confluence for the goals of the MST, CONTAG, and Rede Ecovida. The strategy’s development was made possible through networking between political actors within a new regime characterized by an opportunity structure marked with a large presence of actors allied with the PT government. These actors moved between different public spaces, especially within the many councils on public policy management that were open to public participation (Muller, Silva, and Schneider, 2012).

As regimes and repertoires changed over time, agendas of rural movements changed accordingly. The agrarian issue took on a whole new meaning as the fight over land became focused on dividing spaces as well as legitimizing different ways of life within those spaces. In this context, land is not exclusively defined as a factor of capitalist production, but also as a basis for which communities express their culture and identity (Medeiros, 2015). Nevertheless, the issue of land ownership would remain central as long as conflicts persisted. These centered on the efforts to set boundaries for indigenous areas, create conservation areas, promote settlements based on land reform, and legalize territories that belonged to quilombolas, the descendants of slaves who fled Portuguese plantations during the colonial period.

The Emergence Of An Authoritarian Populist Regime In Brazil

A change in political regime occurred after the relationship between Brazilian political actors was reorganized with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and subsequent rise of former Vice President Michel Temer to the presidency. This change was consolidated when Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential elections in October 2018. This triggered a gradual decline in the degree of democracy in Brazil, accompanied by attacks on human rights, the dismantling of public policies (especially those geared towards social issues), and the dissolution of organizations for social inclusion (Sabourin et al., 2020). During this time, institutional dialogue between the Brazilian state and rural movements was interrupted. Suddenly, collective and public performances became criminalized, considered by the Bolsonaro regime to be associated with disorder and terrorism (Medeiros, 2020).

The change in political regime disrupted many public programs geared towards family farming. It also forced rural movements to modify their action repertoires. However, each rural movement responded differently to this change in regime. At first, CONTAG tried to keep the communication channels with the Temer government open. Some within CONTAG even hoped this dialogue could be improved, and that the MDA might fall under the control of another political group. In contrast, the MST adopted a confrontational stance and went as far as denouncing the events surrounding Rousseff’s downfall as a “coup.” This position explains why the MST mobilized its forces for the return of a left-wing coalition during the 2018 presidential elections. Ecovida also condemned the Bolsonaro regime for dismantling public policies. Nonetheless, it went into dialogue with certain sectors of the government to try to save some of its favored policies, such as those promoting sustainable agricultural expansion. These different interpretations and decisions led to increased fragmentation between these movements.

Bolsonaro’s victory put an end to the hope for a return of a democratic coalition within the Brazilian government. It also ended any chance for resuming public policies that were built in collaboration with social movements. On the contrary, after 2018, there was a rapid process of dismantling not only of the policy tools to support family farming and agroecology, but also of the very political identity fostered around these concepts. Due to its close ties to the largest conservative groups in Brazilian agribusiness (Pompeia, 2021), the Bolsonaro government began attacking rural movements by delegitimizing the very identities of the social groups that represented them. The Ministry of Agriculture decided to privilege “small-scale production,” a label with a strong pejorative meaning, instead of family farming. The term was frequently used by government officials from the 1960s to 1980s, then fell into disuse during the 1990s, when new rural unions and their fight for recognition began to emerge in Brazilian politics (Picolotto, 2018).

In stark contrast to international debates at the time, agroecology became taboo within Brazilian federal government discourse (Niederle et al., 2022). In Latin America, the term had a strong political component associated with rural movements, traditional communities, and indigenous peoples (Muñoz et al., 2021). Therefore, instead of proposing a new strategy focused on appropriating and redefining a new discourse on agroecology (which occurred frequently among many governments and international organizations), the new dominant coalition decided to fight initiatives associated with this vocabulary. This attitude affected how intellectuals from organizations linked to industrial agriculture understood this process. For them, agroecology was nothing more than an ideological countermovement, based on ideas that were supposedly false, that was created to delegitimize advances in the field of modern agriculture (Navarro, 2019).

The emergence of an authoritarian populist regime in Brazil was founded on a narrative of “antipolitics” (Avritzer, 2020). This narrative championed Jair Messias Bolsonaro as its messiah who would carry out national “moral cleansing” (Goldstein, 2019; Hunter and Power, 2019). The goal was to rid the nation of corruption, communism, gender ideology, and even of the danger science posed to “God, Country, and Family,” a slogan Bolsonaro borrowed from Ação Integralista Brasileira (Brazilian Integralist Action), a movement inspired by European fascism that emerged during the 1930s (Boito, 2020). Claiming to speak “for the people,” as is characteristic among populist governments, the “myth” (the term used by Bolsonaro supporters to refer to their leader) won the 2018 elections with 55% of votes in the second round. This difference was even more pronounced in Brazil’s South, where Bolsonaro received 63%, 68%, and 76% of votes in Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, and Santa Catarina, respectively. These percentages can only be explained by this populist narrative’s broad range of support, even within social bases tied to family farming. The narrative, in turn, caused an internal crisis within rural movements that challenged their ability to remain united as political coalitions.

Besides being a populist, Bolsonaro revealed his authoritarian side. He gave key government positions to military officials, and even chose a retired general as his vice president. In 2020, ten ministries in the Bolsonaro government were held by military officials. This number was greater than even that within the majority of the governments who ruled during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985). The only entities without military officials in strategic posts were the Central Bank, the Office of the Federal Attorney General, and the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The number of military officials who received civilian posts in the federal government rose from 2,957 in 2016 to 6,157 in 2020 (Motta, 2021). Further evidence of this authoritarian shift was not only reported heavily in the Brazilian press, but also supported by sound analyses within academic literature. These examined phenomena such as open protests against democratic institutions, attempts to curtail the press, efforts to dismantle collegiate institutions, the onset of autocratic decision-making, the production/circulation of fake news by state actors, etc. (Menezes and Barbosa, 2021; Boito, 2020; Nobre, 2020).

Faced with this resurgence in Brazilian authoritarianism, rural movements opted to reduce their public and collective strategies and focus on those of a semi-public nature (Carvalho, 2020). Nonetheless, CONTAG’s leadership had problems assuming a more critical stance towards the Brazilian government. This was because Bolsonaro still enjoyed significant support among a large section of CONTAG’s social base in Brazil’s South. By contrast, the MST decided to veer away from its usual policy of direct confrontation through its usual public actions (occupations and street demonstrations), as leaders felt that the state reaction could pose risks to the future of Brazilian democracy. The fact that President Bolsonaro himself threatened repeatedly to launch a coup d’état only served to confirm their fears. Ecovida’s ability to react to the shift in political circumstances (already very limited due to its status as a network comprised of smaller regional organizations) was exacerbated by a lack of resources. The government’s dismantling of public policies created a deep crisis within social organizations who implemented local agricultural policies. As a result, these organizations were forced to drastically reduce their roster of funcionários-militantes (“militant officials”). In the end, any chance to use street demonstrations as a tactic to pressure the government was hampered by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This context compelled social movements to adopt other types of repertoires, such as the political construction of new markets (Carvalho et al., 2022).

Markets Building As An Action Repertoire

The most widely known definition of “the market” is derived from utilitarian economic theory. According to this theory, all economic actors behave in a calculated manner within a competitive environment that is completely impersonal (Mankiw, 2020). Resistance to this way of understanding exchange relations began to manifest when markets were defined as institutions (Polanyi, 2000). This definition compels us to recognize the highly political component that lies beneath “commercial logics.”

Historically, the relationship between markets and social movements was always fraught with alienation and conflict. Currently, a “market logic” is seen by the rural movements analyzed in this article as something to be condemned or opposed. This “satanic mill” is the source of the breakdown currently affecting society. It must be opposed in order to force the state to curtail the disintegration of social life (Polanyi, 2000). Therefore, if one seeks to “defeat the market,” one must first “conquer” the state. This line of reasoning led rural movements to achieve some victories with regards to regulating land markets, pesticides, work, and food during the fourteen years of PT rule. However, even they admitted that their strategies did not go far enough to successfully stop the advance of “marketization.”

Despite this perspective that viewed the market as “demonic,” one of the main innovations in rural movement action repertoires during the democratic/participatory regime was the establishment of “alternative food networks” (Goodman, DuPuis, and Goodman, 2012). These markets were guided by institutional logics that favored the integration of family, rural, and sustainable forms of farming into the Brazilian economy, as well as granting them social recognition. Rural movements understood that markets could also serve as arenas for their fight for food redistribution, recognition, and justice (Kropp, Antoni-Komar, and Sage 2020; Fligstein, 2001).

These markets were redefined in a biased manner, since they were the object of profound disagreements within the movements themselves. Most movement leaders were trained according to a relatively orthodox Marxist ideology. They also had ties to left-wing parties and organizations associated with Liberation Theology. As a result, the idea of “building markets” as a form of activism sounded like heresy to many interviewed. This was the case in the government-sponsored procurement programs, also known as “institutional markets.” These programs did not stem from the demands of rural movements. On the contrary, it was the activism of state actors that drove rural movements to push beyond traditional demands for more agricultural policies. This paved the way for the possibility of promoting family farming and agroecology through building new markets.

Long before public procurement programs were created, rural movements were already engaged in marketplace building. However, these were seen as “non-markets,” or rather, spaces that were supposedly based on logics that were alien to economic or commercial behavior, such as reciprocity and solidarity. When elements were incorporated from the same instrumental rationality that governed the state, public procurement programs shed a light on a hybrid world. This challenged the image of two “hostile worlds” in deep conflict with one another (Zelizer, 2003), in which impersonal qualities are characteristics of the market and privacy, solidarity, reciprocity, and compassion occur essentially outside of its boundaries. During the 2000s, family farming began to be consolidated throughout Brazil, thanks to support from government procurement programs and a broader array of rural development policies (Grisa and Schneider, 2014). As a result, new markets had to be created in order to accommodate this expanding production.

It was mainly in Brazil’s South, a region that already had a more established history of cooperatives, that rural movement activism led to the founding of many associations and cooperatives. These organizations tried to establish commercial networks such as the Circuito Sul da Rede Ecovida de Agroecologia (Rede Ecovida’s Southern Agroecology Circuit) and RedeCoop (Oliveira, Grisa, and Niederle, 2020). Not long after these networks were created, rural movements came to represent farmers who found themselves entangled in a labyrinth of markets that operated according to different institutional logics. In response, some of these rural movements were soon enveloped by discussions concerning how commercialization within one market could impact their own economic and political strategies. The most recurring theme within these discussions concerned the sale of organic food from rural agriculture (including those from rural settlements sponsored by the MST) to large supermarket chains. While some leaders viewed this as a way to enhance the visibility of and appreciation for agroecology and land reform, others saw it as capitulating to corporate power. Nonetheless, the idea persisted that this strategy was a “necessary evil,” given that other solidarity markets did not dedicate enough time towards bringing their products to market (Muñoz et al., 2021).

Markets Building In The Action Repertoires Utilized By Contag, The Mst, And Rede Ecovida

Schneider (2016) illustrated the diversity within agrifood markets organizations by classifying them according to four variables. These include the type of family farmer, the locus and/or spatial reach, the nature of trade/business models, and forms of regulation. Based on these criteria, he identifies four categories: a) Neighborhood markets that dominate interpersonal relations and include mechanisms for promoting mutual recognition and reciprocity; b) Local/territorial markets where trade becomes increasingly based on a supply-and-demand relationship that forms the basis of a simple market economy; c) Traditional markets that relate to the market economy concept proposed by Polanyi (2000) or, rather, a situation where actors behave in a specific manner centered around the goal of maximizing profits; and d) Institutional and public markets as areas of exchange geared towards demand where the main agent is the state or non-governmental organization that operates through programs based on guaranteed purchases.

Of the three movements analyzed in this article, Ecovida was historically the most focused on building neighborhood markets. This was due to the decentralized organization of the movement itself, which was composed of many smaller organizations whose activities were limited to a local scale. The primary examples of this decentralized form of organization are fairs showcasing organic products, consumer associations, and direct sales systems created by farmers’ groups responsible for participatory certification processes and social inspections of organic quality.

The state’s official approval of participatory certification during the democratic/participatory regime was the result of coordinated activism between the different networks within these movements. This favored the rapid proliferation of groups such that, in 2022, the number was close to 300 and include almost 5,000 families in Brazil’s South. This expansion led to the creation of territorialized centers, which fostered a new level of coordination around economic and political strategies. From these centers sprang associations, cooperatives, and non-governmental organizations that sought to help Brazilian farmers make the transition to more sustainable forms of farming. This process led many to pay more attention to territorial markets. In this way, Ecovida followed the model of the Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia (National Agroecology Articulation, ANA), a national network movement within which Ecovida has a large amount of influence as an acting member.

In the 2000s, Ecovida came to realize the importance of territories, which can act as an appropriate gauge with which to plan a transition to systems more suitable to sustainable farming. This process includes the territorialization of markets and policies. However, in light of the dismantling of national policies that occurred as a result of the political regime change, Ecovida expanded its efforts to dialogue with subnational actors (states and municipalities). This included formulating local policies geared towards building territorial markets.

Since adopting agroecology as a political cause during the 2000s, the MST actively promoted neighborhood, local, and territorial markets. The establishment of these markets was also led by groups involved in participatory certification and social inspections. Nonetheless, the organizational structure of this movement in Brazil’s South came with certain limitations regarding the notion of a decentralized food system based on territorial networks with sites for products to be marketed (such as in Ecovida’s model). In this region, the MST originally promoted a centralized and collectivist logic with regards to food production and commodification, as seen in the MST’s Cooperativas de Produção Agropecuária (Agricultural Production Cooperatives) (Muñoz, 2019). In this model, each settlement, or group of settlements within the same territory, must design an economic strategy based on a chosen item which, in turn, will serve as the settlement’s “flagship” product and form the basis for its diversification strategies. In practice, this strategy generally involves choosing an agricultural commodity to produce on a large scale. Afterwards, efforts are made to ensure this product acquires value through processing within cooperative conglomerates for organic products (Martins, 2017). This process is evident in settlements that produce rice near the Porto Alegre metropolitan area, milk in western Santa Catarina, and yerba mate in Paraná’s midwestern region.

While this large-scale production made the settlements near the Porto Alegre metropolitan area among the largest producers of organic rice in Latin America, ⁴ it also created a problem: it did not allow for all this production to be distributed to local and territorial markets. This included initiatives to promote e-commerce that multiplied during the COVID-19 pandemic (Carvalho et al., 2022; Muñoz et al., 2021). Some MST leaders considered this a weakness in terms of advancing the cause of equality in food distribution. Another weakness is that these markets must also meet the demands of a very restricted class of consumers, generally composed of small, politicized groups that support agroecology and land reform as well as families with greater purchasing power located close to places where organic products are sold (generally, in middle-class and rich neighborhoods). This discussion also occurs within Ecovida, especially in those centers and groups with more structured cooperatives, who feel forced to turn to traditional markets to sell their products. As a result, they are criticized for supposedly selling out to food corporations (Oliveira, Grisa, and Niederle, 2020).

During the democratic/participatory regime, MST and Ecovida saw public procurement programs as an alternative market with capacity to absorb a large part of their production. In 2012, close to 80% of the total production stemming of organic rice from rural settlements was sent to institutional markets. MST leaders demonstrated their loyalty to socialist ideals when they argued the state should buy and redistribute large quantities of food, play a central role in reorganizing the food system, and lead the fight against hunger and other issues related to food and nutrition insecurity. Among interviewed leaders, some even stated, “The hope is that public policies would allow the state to absorb all of the production or, at least 80%,” or, “The state through CONAB [Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento, National Provisions Company] should have the market under control.” These statements confirm that public procurement programs played a central role in the MST’s political project: “The very meaning of popular land reform is that [we] need to challenge the institutional market.” This sentiment became even more pronounced when hunger and food insecurity reemerged as major issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. ⁵

As public procurement ⁶ policies declined, commercialization in traditional markets came to be seen as a “necessary evil” to guarantee the survival of rural settlements and cooperatives. At the same time, however, they were seen as an alternative with which to guarantee a supply of healthy food to poorer populations on the margins of Brazilian society. These were the same populations who lived in neighborhoods where fairs promoting organic food, consumer groups, and e-commerce systems did not exist and/or were incompatible with their livelihoods and per capita income. Furthermore, the MST was aware of the power asymmetry inherent in relations with large retailers. As a result, it sought to find alternatives to connect the supply from rural settlements with consumer demand that was organized by urban social movements. These included street fairs, informed consumer groups, e-commerce, and franchised retail sites such as Armazém do Campo (Muñoz, 2019).

During the pandemic, the MST organized solidarity campaigns that took the form of food drives for people suffering from food insecurity in Brazilian cities. This strategy was implemented in conjunction with urban housing movements, unions, cooperatives, and other local organizations who built the logistics for food transportation and distribution. This food was served in natura and prepared in packed lunches. These activities played a crucial role in forming alliances between the city and the countryside and were also linked to the fight for land reform, insofar as collective market gardens (which were first used to support food drives) were created in camps to promote an anti-waste campaign during the pandemic (Carvalho et al., 2022). While Bolsonaro’s ministers merely suggested donating expired food (Teixeira et al., 2021), the MST used mass actions to challenge who was able to guarantee access to healthy food to vulnerable Brazilian populations during a health crisis.

Finally, CONTAG’s stance in this period was the most ambiguous of the three movements. This ambiguity was due to the heterogeneity at the heart of CONTAG’s social base. In some instances, unions were deeply engaged in building local and territorial markets, to the point where they supported the transition to sustainable forms of farming. It must be said, however, that the rural women workers’ movement (with ties to CONTAG) played a central role in formulating the Política Nacional de Agroecologia e Produção Orgânica (National Policy for Agroecology and Organic Production) (Siliprandi, 2017). Nonetheless, in other instances the predominance of a perspective based on a modernized family farming sector pushed unions to prioritize demands for agricultural policies, which only served to encourage the incorporation of farmers into commodity markets. This phenomenon became even more evident when Pronaf fell under the sway of the Ministry of Agriculture after the MDA was dissolved. Political leaders sought to justify their position by arguing that the role of the unions was to exert pressure. This pressure would, then, ensure that family farmers had appropriate conditions to sell their products, without discussing the consequences of entering another type of market.

CONTAG’s leaders were not unaware of the risks associated with subordinating farmers to other actors who controlled commodity markets. Indeed, most CONTAG leaders were critical not only of this relationship, but of everything associated with the Brazilian economy’s growing dependency on agricultural commodity exports. Unfortunately, they were not able to construct a genuine opposition to this process, for the simple reason that this dependency met the needs of an important segment of the social base that these unions relied upon, especially family soybean farmers in southern Brazil’s. Strong arguments in defense of agroecology (or, rather, industrial anti-agriculture) led to a crisis of representation within the movement itself. This pushed family farmers with more capital to migrate towards the sphere of influence of another employer, which was also one of CONTAG’s top competitors in setting Brazilian agricultural policy: the Confederação Nacional de Agricultura (National Confederation of Agriculture, CNA).

This dilemma also explains why it was harder for CONTAG to criticize the government’s dismantling of public policies compared to the other two movements. In Brazil’s South, an important segment of CONTAG’s social base supported Bolsonaro. This was because members either shared the same conservative moral values as Bolsonaro, or because they profited from a rise in agricultural commodity prices generated by the currency devaluation policy. While some CONTAG leaders were trying to establish political unity with the other rural movements in opposition to the government, others were obstructing these goals out of fear of internal crisis of representation within the organization. This type of conservative orientation not only formed the social base of the movement, but also set the stage for a new idea among CONTAG leaders with regards to markets: that CONTAG should promote a “homeopathic transition” to new models based on commodification, production, and consumption (Muñoz, 2019). This idea repeatedly led to tension with other actors who viewed this discourse as giving in to the pressure exerted by actors who dominated traditional markets. Another recurring argument within this movement was that building markets is not part of the action repertoires used by unions, and that unions should concentrate solely on making demands on the state.

Conclusion

This article analyzed the transformations within the action repertoires utilized by three Brazilian rural movements (CONTAG, the MST, and Ecovida). First, we identified four periods in Brazil’s recent history. Considering traits such as “governmental capacity” and “level of democracy,” we classified each government according to the following political regimes: Authoritarianism (1964-1988), Neoliberalism (1989-2002), Participatory Democracy (2003-2016), and Authoritarian Populism (2016-present). Based on this classification, we showed how the characteristics of each regime influenced the collective action repertoires used by Brazilian rural movements. We showed that the use of a market building repertoire emerged during the democratic/participatory regime. This repertoire was supported by public policies created through dialogue between state actors and social movements (especially public procurement programs geared towards food and family farming).

Faced with the rise of an authoritarian populist government and the subsequent dismantling of public policies, the repertoire of various movements (including MST and Ecovida) sought to reconcile a strategy of denouncing the government’s actions with the expansion of commodity markets. This policy coincided with new efforts to construct commercial alternatives to ensure the survival of farmers and their cooperative organizations. In this way, the political construction of food markets went hand in hand with a new collective action repertoire. While this new repertoire was less confrontational and not exclusively directed towards the state, it was, nonetheless, effective in its goal of creating a safe environment for rural movements and their political causes.

The organizational characteristics of each movement and their different political projects led to variations in their market building strategies. Even after 2016, CONTAG maintained an institutionalized dialogue with public officials, in order to protect its agricultural policies (such as Pronaf) from being dismantled by the government. Therefore, this movement not only defended one of its main historical achievements, but it was also able to respond to pressure from its social base that, when integrated into commodity markets, became heavily dependent on subsidized rural credit. Although leaders from this union movement were aware of the limits of commodity dependency for farmers and for the Brazilian economy more broadly, they avoided directing any damaging critiques at this model. CONTAG’s formal union structure suggests that it was entangled in political conflicts that were both internal (regarding who controlled the unions) and external (conflicts with other confederations). These conflicts explain the ambiguous position this movement adopted with regards to incorporating the political construction of markets into its action repertoire.

In contrast, land and agroecological movements had their access to the state virtually blocked. Although these movements had political projects that conformed with the ideals of the authoritarian populist regime, the federal government did not maintain any dialogue channels with them. Quite the opposite: policies to aid rural settlements and transition to sustainable forms of farming were the main targets of the government’s efforts to dismantle public policies (Niederle et al., 2022). As a result, these movements’ market building repertoires shifted primarily towards establishing territorial networks.

Due to its foundations as a network movement based on local, decentralized organizations, Ecovida tended to privilege territorial markets. These were conducive to Ecovida’s need to strengthen its various associated organizations. However, Ecovida’s approach was not limited to localism. Commercial exchanges with other regions were bolstered by this network organization. Ecovida’s leaders sought to ensure that no single organization concentrated political and economic power, which allowed them to keep the network in check. According to the leaders, this strategy was consistent with their political project for agroecology that was focused on territories.

Given the historical characteristics of the action repertoires used by the MST (such as occupying land), the organization has a vertically integrated structure with a confrontational political stance geared towards challenging authority. As a result, the political construction of markets was part of a more comprehensive political project that guided the movement’s local activities.

Finally, we sought to expand the utility of the concept “repertoire” by proposing it could be used to categorize the political activities of market building. This allows us to broaden the concept’s heuristic potential by interpreting the relationship between movements and markets (a topic overlooked within social movement studies) as well as dialogue with other fields, such as economic sociology and the sociology of food and agriculture. We conclude that understanding the strategy behind building food markets as a form of repertoire within a broader context of possible political performances provides a powerful analytical basis with which to examine the ways in which rural movements resist the policies adopted by authoritarian populist governments.