Agribusiness Towns, Globalization and Development in Rural Australia and Brazil

The globalization of agriculture is reconfiguring the geography of farming, with increasing concentration of commodity production in favourable regions recast as ‘global farmlands’. Such areas have become targets for investment by transnational agribusiness. In such localities, the influence of agribusiness can shape local political processes, land and labour markets, and processes of urban development. This influence is captured in the concept of the ‘agribusiness city or town’. This chapter examines Dom Pedrito, a small agribusiness town in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and compares it with the town of Smithton, Tasmania, Australia. The findings show that the enrolment of the towns into global networks is facilitated by agribusiness practices and by discourses that prioritize agribusiness development but which also introduce new contingencies as the towns are exposed to vulnerabilities from distant events, whilst the capacity to act of agribusiness is contested and constrained by local and national actors.