Agro and sertanejo powerhouse, Midwest grows more than twice as much as Brazil and fulfills ‘JK’s dream’

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While the country’s population grew by 0.52% over the last 12 years, the number of inhabitants in the Midwest rose by 1.23%; according to an expert heard by the BBC, economic expansion ‘motivates all waves of migration and is still happening’. Growing generation of jobs attracts people to the Midwest region Reuters via BBC The 2022 Census, released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) this Wednesday (28), revealed that the Midwest was the region that registered the largest population increase in Brazil. After establishing itself as an agribusiness power and as a musical hegemony with the sertanejo, the least populous region of the country, with 16.3 million inhabitants, displaced the North and is now the fastest growing. It advanced 1.23% while the country’s population grew 0.52% in the last 12 years. The region with the lowest growth rate was the Northeast, with 0.24%. Only with new data from the Census and future research will it be possible to explain this growth, but, in an interview with BBC News Brasil, professor of economics, administration and sociology at Esalq (Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz, da USP) Carlos Eduardo de Freitas Vian stated that the Midwest attracts many people because it has become a center of opportunity. “This motivates all waves of migration and is still happening. Today, you have opportunities in large industries that have settled in the Midwest.” “Before, migrating to the region was a great adventure, but that has changed and has become a reference in growth and job creation, unlike others that are stagnating, whether in agriculture or in the agro-industry sector”, says Vian. The professor explains that the region offers jobs in different areas besides the countryside, for example in industry and the service sector. Agricultural growth in the Midwest, coupled with a growing concern for the environment, has caused an exponential increase, according to him, in the recent migration of professionals specialized in environmental certification to the region. The job offer can also explain, at least in part, the population boom in some cities in the region in relation to the rest of the country. LEARN MORE: Escape from the crisis and the strength of agriculture: what explains internal migration Growth was greater in the interior than in capitals; understand According to the most recent quarterly PNAD Continuous survey by the IBGE, the unemployment rate in the Midwest is at 7%, lower than the national average of 8.8%. It is the second lowest rate in the country, just ahead of the South region, with 5%. Considering Brazilian cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, the one with the highest population growth rate was a city in Goiás: Senador Canedo, with an annual rate of 5.23%. This municipality, in the metropolitan region of Goiânia, was the one with the highest proportional population growth over the years: in 2010, it had 84,443 inhabitants, increasing to 155,635 in 2022 — an increase of 84.3%. There are several other cities in the Midwest in the ranking of cities that grew the most, such as Sinop (MT) and Sorriso (MT). And the influence of the region goes beyond issues more related to agro production. In recent decades, the Centro-Oeste has also become a great music center in the country, mainly country music. There are dozens of artists who have emerged among the most popular in the country, such as Marília Mendonça, Gusttavo Lima, Michel Teló and Maiara & Maraísa. In a survey released in March by the streaming platform Spotify, six of the ten most played artists in the summer of 2023 were born in the Midwest. They are singers who extol in part of their lyrics the pride of living on the farm and living the country life. Currently, TV Globo also shows the telenovela Terra e Paixão, which tells the daily life in the countryside. But, as much as the Esalq professor also emphasizes the economic growth and visibility of the region, he claims that it is still far from being able to say that the Midwest can become the “locomotive of the country”, since the State of São Paulo is still corresponds to about a third of the Brazilian GDP, with 44.4 million inhabitants – about a fifth of the country’s population. Despite its cultural influence and economic strength, according to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the Midwest is the region with the smallest electoral college in the country, with 11.5 million voters. The Southeast region is the largest, with around 67 million, equivalent to 42% of the electorate. The march of expansion Professor Vian states that, to understand the current growth of the Midwest, it is necessary to go back “about 40 years”. “From the 1970s, the country began to have a project of national integration and expansion of the agricultural frontier. At the time, they began to carry out interiorization projects, some state and others private. Center-South, like people from Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul”, says the professor. He explains that these people sold their land in the South and, with the money, could buy much larger areas in the Midwest, in a bid to increase productivity and income. In the beginning, explains Vian, the area was mostly used for livestock. But farmers have adapted other crops for the region, such as soybeans and, more recently, corn. The constant investment in infrastructure, such as highways, schools and hospitals, has made the region increasingly attractive. The expert claims that new cities began to emerge during this period, some planned. But the great boom began, according to him, in the 1990s and 2000s, when Brazil began to gain importance in the international grain market. “The large production of soy and meat made the region important. In 1980, the second phase of this agricultural occupation began, with the migration of agro-industrial companies to the region, with sugar, ethanol and soy processing plants. meat and chicken processors and a new infrastructure for the distribution and disposal of agricultural products. This generated a capacity to make better use of production”, he said. Juscelino’s dream JK’s dream of moving the country to the interior after the creation of Brasília came true, according to specialist Gervásio Baptista/Personal archive/Agência Brasil, via BBC The professor said that today we are close to the peak of this expansion, with the modernization of cities , leisure and education options, relevant agricultural production, distribution and production cooperatives. For him, it is already possible to say that the dream of ex-president Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1961) of interiorizing the country has come true. Something that arose from his decision to build Brasília and transfer the capital to the Midwest. “The internalization of the capital was the first step. Soy was the main crop responsible for the success of the region, but corn is also becoming relevant. Today, there is still a perspective that a variety of wheat developed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation ( Embrapa) has the potential to be produced in the Midwest and expand new horizons soon”, he said. The IBGE itself reported that the Census reveals the strength of the interiorization of the Brazilian population, “highlighting numerically municipalities located both in the North and in the Midwest, then those located in the Southeast and in a continuous strip between the coast of Santa Catarina and the surroundings of Curitiba (PR), in the South”. Carlos Vian explains that a new multidisciplinary agro-industrial business model should further boost growth in the Midwest. “It’s about the process in which we have the production of grains, livestock and wood within the same property. This should attract other large agroindustries, such as timber companies. Having agriculture, livestock and the processing industry in the same place greatly reduces costs”, he says. The states of Mato Grosso and Goiás are pointed out by the IBGE as the highlights of the region’s population, with growth of 1.57% and 1.36%, respectively. “In the Midwest, what draws attention is the interiorization of the settlement from the axis formed around Brasília-Goiânia, making Goiás stand out in this region due to the density reached by the municipalities of the urban concentration formed around the federal capital and the state capital”, says the institute. ALSO READ: See Census data about the city where you live The 10 cities that most gained population and the ones that lost the most Dependency on China For Esalq professor, Brazil has to diversify agribusiness trade to decentralize monopoly with China Reuters via BBC O Esalq professor states that there is no doubt that the great growth of the Midwest region occurred from the improvement in Brazil’s international insertion in the grain market from the 2000s onwards. The most recent survey by the National Supply Company (Conab) , the region is responsible for about 50% of all grains produced in the country. For soybeans, specifically, the number is also around 50%. However, he says that it is necessary to be careful with the risks that exist due to the great influence, mainly of China, as the majority buyer of products from the region. “Selling to the gigantic Chinese market was an opportunity that we took advantage of, but it is necessary to observe its risks. Something that we have been discussing is that we have a very great dependence on China and we need to counterbalance the importance of that country”, he says. “The ideal thing would be to try to diversify our exports a little more. Perhaps to gain access to the European market a little more and make a stronger agreement with Mercosur.” Despite hoping for a record soybean harvest in 2023, economists also see China’s announcement that it will expand the area destined for soybean planting in the country as a warning. The decision was taken to try to get closer to self-sufficiency in grain production after fearing a shortage during the Covid-19 pandemic. Environmental impact The ever-increasing attempt to try to expand these productions and expand agribusiness production records also raises an alert regarding the growth of deforestation in the Cerrado. A report by BBC News Brasil published two weeks ago points out that we have not yet reached the halfway point of the year, but the Cerrado has already reached a new deforestation record, both in May and in the annual accumulated, of the historical series, which started in 2019. data from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), between January and May of this year, more than 3,320 km² of the biome were deforested, an increase of 27% compared to the same period last year. For comparison purposes, this territory deforested in the first five months of 2023 is equivalent to almost twice the total area of ​​the city of São Paulo. In 2022, the ecoregion had already recorded the highest deforestation rate in seven years: 10,689 km², according to official data released by Prodes Cerrado, INPE’s monitoring program. In all, 110 million hectares of the biome (49% of the total) have already been destroyed. In most of these places, extensive cultivation of agricultural commodities was implemented, mainly soy, corn, sugar cane and cotton. For Professor Carlos Vian, environmental degradation in the region is a remnant of this process of expansion in the Midwest, as occupation by agriculture led to the clearing of large areas. For him, we have strict laws that can stop an environmental disaster in the region, but that need to be respected. “The issue is to ensure that the Forestry Code is followed. You have liabilities from other regions and need to maintain the riparian forest, recompose legal forests. If this is done, and we know that the speed is not very high, it will help a lot. The issue of fire in the cerrado is natural. Every year there is and some trees even need fire because otherwise their seeds won’t hatch”, says the professor. For him, it is necessary to increase the inspection capacity against deforestation, with joint operations between Ibama, ICMBio and the police of each State. “What needs to be more urgently concerned is the fires in the Amazon, but there is also an expansion of agribusiness in the Cerrado in the area known as Matopiba (Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia). to enable the construction of infrastructure and roads in the region”, he warns. Learn more about the 2022 Census: G1 in 1 Minute: Brazil has more than 203 million inhabitants, shows 2022 Census

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