Growth Lock-Ins: Brazil’s Agrifood System in a Web of Dependencies

This article examines how global interdependencies shape Brazil’s agrifood systems and their capacity to pursue post-growth pathways. Post-growth (or degrowth) envisions economies reorganized around well-being, justice, and ecological limits rather than GDP growth. While increasingly discussed globally, its viability in the Global South and in critical sectors such as agrifood remains underexplored. Brazil’s agrifood sector offers a critical case, as it underpins export-led growth while driving most national greenhouse gas emissions and severe socio-environmental impacts. Drawing on World-Systems Analysis, decolonial theory, and post-growth thought, this study combines export data of soybeans, corn, sugar, and meat with a Document Analysis of international agreements and national policy documents from 1990 to 2020 to unravel interdependent dynamics and patterns over time. Findings reveal that binding trade agreements entrench growth-oriented narratives of efficiency and productivity, embedding Brazil’s agrifood governance within a (green) growth agenda. This has deepened environmental degradation and social conflicts. Post-growth principles, such as sufficiency, commons, and regeneration, appear mainly in non-binding agreements, but remain marginal in state policy. Yet multipolar geopolitical shifts and strong grassroots initiatives signal openings for post-growth agrifood futures, requiring institutional, technological, and financial reorientation towards sufficiency, justice, and care.