Description du sujet de thèse

The new scales of agribusiness: combining geography and agronomy to understand environmental dynamics in agricultural frontiers of Brazil

Contexte de travail

Brazil became one of the world's larger agricultural producer (mainly soy, sugarcane, meat, corn) from the 2000s onwards, due to new forms of international investment, technological modernization, along with land and economic concentration, to supply growing global demand. In this period, legislative frameworks and/or control instruments were created or enhanced to regulate the use of natural resources on farms: Rural Environmental Registry, deforestation and water use licenses, certifications. But despite a spectacular reduction in the deforestation rates from 2004 to 2012 in the Amazon, it is now increasing again in the country as a whole. As other agroindustrial firms in many countries, preliminary research in Western Bahia and Roraima show that big agricultural firms are often multi-sited: they are divided in several farms, both at the micro-local scale (fractioning into contiguous properties), and at the regional and national scale (farms network).
The SOYLANDIA project explore the ways in which the agribusiness sector ensures its spatial expansion and political legitimacy in the face of the growing national and international demand for sustainable agriculture. We hypothesize that environmental policies and agro-industrial expansion have co-evolved in Brazil in recent decades, and that multi-sited agriculture facilitates environmental deregulation.

PhD research topic
Within the project, the PhD research will focus on spatial and environmental practices of agro-industrial firms in the MATOPIBA region (Brazilian Cerrado), in order to characterize the new scales of agricultural industrialization in Brazil and the associated reforms of environmental and agricultural policies. This includes the incorporation of water issues (access to and uses of water resources and wetlands), beyond land and deforestation issues.
Spatial, socioeconomic and agronomic data aims at grasping local practices in farms networks, and their mobilization of environmental and agricultural policy instruments at local and regional scales.
The PhD student will first elaborate her/his theoretical and methodological framework drawing upon different fields of research and based on his/her own interest: rural sociology and geography, political ecology, environmental studies etc.
He/she will explore the trajectories of selected agro-industrial firms in its study area, added to the analysis of land use change and state public policies reforms, using several methodological tools and data sources: agrarian system analysis, mapping of farm networks, qualitative analysis of collective actions, timelines of environmental norms and institutions at state and federal levels (forest and water). He/she will use different data production methods: observations, interviews, geospatial analysis, documental and secondary data processing. The field research will involve conducting in-depth qualitative interviews with farmers in various areas of the MATOPIBA region, as well as with other stakeholders involved in environmental management. It will also be important to identify the political networks linking government, elected representatives and agricultural players.

Contraintes et risques

The PhD student will be co-supervised by Ludivine Eloy, research director in geography at CNRS (UMR ART-Dev), and Marta Inez Medeiros Marques, professor at USP's Geography Department (Laboratory of Agrarian Geography).
The position is based in Montpellier (at UMR ART-Dev: https://art-dev.cnrs.fr/) with several months of fieldwork planned in Brazil. ART-Dev is a multi-disciplinary research unit that focuses on social, spatial and economic dynamics that shape inhabited space and its uses. In Brazil, the student will work with the main partners of the project: the University of São Paulo, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the Rural federal university of Rio de Janeiro, the University of Brasilia, the University of Wester Bahia (UFOB), and the Federal Institute of Piaui (IFPI), and the Imaterra association.
The project will fund doctoral fellowship for two PhD students (one from Brazil-USP and one from France-CNRS). The two PhD students will be in direct dialogue with each other through a comparative approach and will rely on the solid Franco-Brazilian network of social science research on the Brazilian rural world.

Informations complémentaires

Requirements
• A Masters' degree either in social sciences (geography, sociology) or in agronomy with a strong interest for social sciences and qualitative methods
• Strong interest in interdisciplinarity and environmental issues
• Excellent writing skills
• Proficiency in Portuguese and Frenche is required
• Previous experience in doing fieldwork in Latin America and GIS skills are additional assets.

General information
• Starting date: October 1st 2025, open to discussion
• Salary: 2200€/month (gross salary)-2300 €/month from 2026 onwards
• Contract: 36 months, full time.
• Starting in January 2026, up to 5,000 euros will be available each year for travel expenses (MITI funding).
• For more information, please do not hesitate to contact Ludivine.eloy@univ-montp3.fr in advance.
• The selected candidates will be invited for an online interview, that will take place during the week of June 30th.