Types of planned agrarian colonization in Brazilian forests: Historical examples

Abstract

About 200 years ago state or privately controlled agrarian colonization in South Brazil began with immigrants from Central and Southern Europe. As the Brazilian campos had been occupied by extensive cattle ranching of large landholders, forests were systematically cleared by peasants, the new rural social middle class. Three examples of the most different types of agrarian colonization are presented, colonization of European small farmers in South Brazil in the 19th century; colonization of a private English land company and its Brazilian successor, favoured by the coffee boom, with small and medium-sized holdings in Northern Paraná since the 1930s; and the state controlled projects of agrarian colonization within new Government strategies of regional integration of Amazonia in the 1970s... Keywords: Agrarian Colonization; Family agriculture; Spatial and social mobility; South Brazil; Northern Paraná; Amazonia.