Dinâmica Agrícola da Soja no Cerrado da microrregião de Chapadinha-MA: sua inserção no município de Anapurus

Abstract

This study is about the process of expansion of the agricultural frontier in the east of Maranhão state, specifically in the municipality of Anapurus, from the incorporation of this area on the monoculture of soya. The main objective was to analyze this process under the view of the capitalist agricultural frontier and of the development of the territory. The study is based on the dialectical historical materialism. At the first moment, we pointed out the relation between agriculture and development, discussing the ways they both interrelate. Our interest was to understand if the cultivation of soya in the region mentioned previously caused or nota context of local and regional development on the point of view of socio-spatial transformations. Next, we analyzed how this reality was set in a new agricultural frontier from the productive incorporation of new areas for cultivation of soya and its consequence while modernization of productive technical basis. At last, we discussed the revalorization of the territorial identity of that region, usually identified as Baixo Parnaíba Maranhense, but political-administrative and naturally known as Chapadinha micro-region and how this feeling is a way of situating politically up against the expansion of this capitalist activity. We consider soya as the mobilizing culture for the expansion of the agricultural frontier in eastern Maranhão, with modernization of technical productive basis that caused sociospatial modifications which did not lead to the development of the region.