The controversial evolution of the Brazilian agricultural machinery industry from 1920 to 2020

Abstract

This article aims at the historical analysis of the agricultural machinery segment (tractors and harvesters) in Brazil, reflecting the geopolitical barriers for the genuinely national industry and its evolution. This is a research supported by a theoretical framework aimed at understanding the historical contexts, the concept of national development and the genesis and development of the industrial segment. As an illustration and verification of the contradictions of the historical contexts, there was the analysis of official and corporate data, contradicted with the Brazilian potential, the experiences and the impediments to the full national realization of the segment, discussed under the premises of authors of history economic growth in Brazil. It is concluded that the historical barriers to Brazilian industrialization were influenced by national oligarchies in alliance with foreign capital. With the 1930 Revolution, paradigms were changed, the basic industry was erected and national-developmentalist policies were introduced which potentiated economic growth, raising the genesis of the Brazilian agricultural machinery industry. However, years later, assumptions were revised, opening the market for the installation of foreign companies in the country. The national industry did not resist foreign force and state deprotection from the second half of the 1970s onwards, deconstructing itself, denationalizing it, forming the current foreign oligopoly.