Cracking the nut of agribusiness and global food insecurity: In search of a critical agenda of research

The article examines some of the main trends of the modernisation of agribusiness and raises some questions about geographical transformations taking place in the centre and north of Brazil. The country represents an emblematic case of neo-liberalised agriculture in need of further investigation. It is discussed in the text how corporate, industrial-scale agribusiness practices in Brazil bring back some spectral elements of capitalism, which never disappeared and in which the invisible becomes visible again. It is a phenomenon of multiple dialectics that needs further theoretical, methodological and investigative elaboration. The most dramatic circumstances, and most interesting for academics to study, are at the frontier of the expansion of agribusiness, where spatially and temporally patterns are heterogeneous and largely unpredictable. Agribusiness is especially promoted at the agriculture frontier in Brazil because it is in itself an economic, ecological and ethical frontier. Therefore, critical research into the complexity of contemporary agribusiness should really be about the political economy of alternatives to the highly vulnerable and unsatisfactory approaches to food and agriculture that prevail today and continue to expand unabated.