The Classist, Sexist, Racist, and Regionalist Nature of the Access to Rural Extension Service in Brazil: An Intersectional and Spatio-temporal Analysis of 2006 and 2017 Agricultural Census Data

Between 2004 and 2018, more than R$2.4 billion were made available by the Brazilian Federal Government to guarantee the provision of rural extension services in the states of the country, serving, at the end of this period, approximately 7 million families. However, despite the significant investments and various actions carried out by the Federal Government, recent studies reveal that the continuous and universal provision of rural extension services in the country remain a serious challenge to the Brazilian State. In order to investigate this issue, this article seeks to examine the changes that occurred in the metrics of access to this service in Brazil between 2006 and 2017. To fully achieve this objective, we examine a set of statistical data from the 2006 and 2017 agricultural censuses with information representing access to the rural extension services according to criteria of class (family and non-family farmers), gender (men and women), ethnicity (white, afro-descendants, asian and indigenous peoples) and region (major regions of the country: North, Northeast, Midwest, South and Southeast). From the analysis of these data, it was found that access to this service in Brazil is marked by a classist, sexist, racist, and regionalist nature.