Direito ao desenvolvimento e agronegócio: a inconstitucionalidade do modelo agrário brasileiro

Abstract

This research enters the theme of development, from the viewpoint of 1988’s Constitution of Brazil, aiming to relate it to agribusiness, in its current Brazilian agricultural model, especially in regard to its negative externalities, through an interdisciplinary approach. It deals with the idea of development, not just as an economical goal, but, overall, as a vast field of rights – economic, social, environmental, cultural, and political in nature –, namely, from a legally placed multidimensional perspective. It identifies, in 1988’s Constitution of Brazil, the main elements charged with potentialities and capable of guaranteeing total fulfilment of this wide perspective of development, an instrumental right which aims to guarantee human dignity and happiness. Then, the research questions how close the agribusiness is sticking to constitutional principles and, therefore, its capacity as an agent that promotes development. However, in trying to evade generalization, it establishes its general purpose in verifying how and through which aspects the agribusiness seems incompatible with the concepts of the right to development predicted in the Constitution. It defends the idea that the Brazilian agribusiness is not aligned with the concepts of the right to development conceived by 1988’s Constitution of Brazil. To sustain this statement, it identifies, through bibliographical and documental research, several contradictions of the agribusiness in relation to the constitutional project of development. These contradictions have been systematized, classified and analyzed in four theoretical categories, intimately related to the right to development proposed in the Brazilian Constitution, which are: 1) Fundamental foundations and objectives of the Federative Republic of Brazil; 2) Economic order; 3) Social order; 4) Environmental and agrarian order. The final conclusion extracted from the research can be summed up with the thesis that the agribusiness may be viewed as incompatible with 1988’s Constitution of Brazil, as it violates the concepts of the right to development it predicts. As a consequence, it defends the institutional unconstitutionality of the economic activities portrayed by the agribusiness sector, as well as the public policies and government actions that foster this model, promoted with the proclamation of the 1988 Constitution, bearing in mind that the constitutionality of any project should be bound to the satisfactory service of the ends established by the State, to be accomplished by equally ethic means. Besides questioning the excessively patriotic discourse that glorifies the supposed advantages of the agribusiness in the social consciousness, the research defends a necessary approximation between economics and ethics legally engaged with all members of society and the environment, which is believed to be impossible to reach through the agribusiness model. Besides that, it defends an strong State, capable of overcoming underdevelopment, which means it’s capable to meet everyone’s rights, through public policies that foster projects capable of developing people, eliminating poverty, fighting class inequality, and, still, caring for the environment in the best possible way, aiming to achieve dignity, at the very least, and the happiness of all people, at the most