Forging agrarian trajectories through assets, strategies, and values: structural hybridization between agro-extractivism and the socio-biodiversity economy in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

The socio-biodiversity economy is widely regarded as an alternative agrarian pathway to agro-extractivism in the Brazilian Amazon, capable of reconciling conservation, social inclusion, and income generation. Recent research challenges this promise. Agro-extractivist dynamics have been documented in socio-biodiversity markets, while the farming households that sustain this economy remain largely overlooked, and often idealized. This study examines the livelihood configurations and agrarian trajectories of two groups of cocoa farmers in the Transamazon region—one organic, one conventional—affiliated with two regional cooperatives. It adopts a mixed-method design that extends the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach beyond its traditional focus on material assets by integrating values as a key dimension of livelihood strategies. Data were gathered between March and September 2024 through structured questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic observations. Findings show historically produced asset asymmetries between the two groups, alongside a shared condition as petty commodity producers. Divergent agrarian trajectories emerge not only from material conditions but also from the interplay between assets and the values that guide how farmers mobilize their resources. Conventional farmers pursue emancipation from commodity dependence through economic diversification and market upgrading, while their cooperative channels individual pragmatism toward place-based value aggregation. Organic farmers secure their livelihoods through agroecological farming, but their cooperative operates from a weaker position that hinders the translation of these values into economic practice. Both these trajectories reveal the entanglement of agro-extractivist and socio-biodiversity dynamics within the same households, a condition this study terms structural hybridization. More broadly, the study calls for greater analytical attention to the agrarian dynamics unfolding among the smallholders who sustain the socio-biodiversity economy.