This paper addresses the historical development of the Brazilian beef industry by assessing how it emerged and some of its consequences. In so doing it weaves together three components that were crucial to the development of the Brazilian beef industry during the twentieth century: knowledge, nation and capital. It argues that the development of the Brazilian beef industry was contingent on forms of knowledge and tied to the pursuit of profit and nation-building. This created a dynamic, especially in the years following the Second World War, whereby the Brazilian population had increasing access to beef, which in turn led to the creation of new forms of knowledge and even greater efforts towards capital accumulation that also helped to reinforce national identity.
The paper positions itself at the intersection of several areas of historical research. Firstly, it builds upon the scholarship of Brazilianists concerned with the cattle industry and nation-building in Brazil. Secondly, this paper engages with scholarship about capitalism and the commodification of animals and natural environments, to bring the subject of the Brazilian beef industry into dialogue with these highly productive fields. Thirdly, the paper draws upon recent impetus within the field of the history of knowledge, to go beyond the narrow remit of scientific objects that are often studied, and apply the analytical category of knowledge to the Brazilian beef industry.
The structure of this working paper begins with a historical overview of the development of the Brazilian beef industry up until the 1960s. It follows the development of a commodity chain that is divided into four phases: early Brazilian agricultural commodities, the commodification of cattle, the First World War and national integration. This analysis addresses why the Brazilian beef industry rose to such prominence during the twentieth century. Moreover, it seeks to identify the historical position of beef in the Brazilian economy, the commodification of cattle in Brazil, and the barriers that were overcome to increase the supply of beef. The paper then turns towards the cases of scientific and culinary knowledge since the 1960s and argues that these forms of knowledge were deeply connected to the beef industry and contributed to the construction of national identity and economic development. Specifically, it argues beef became central to a project of nation-building and modernisation that gained pace in the middle of the twentieth century and helped to fuel the creation of new domestic tourism markets. In relationship to this, new forms of culinary knowledge emerged in connection with restaurants, recipes and cookbooks. Alongside this, new scientific knowledge was developed to assist the further growth of the beef industry into new regions of Brazil. These new types of knowledge were also tied to the existing project of nation-building and capital accumulation. Ultimately by understanding the intensification of the interplay between these factors related to knowledge, nation and capital in the case of the Brazilian beef industry, provides a means to help us reframe our understanding of the interaction between nationalism and the industrialisation of meat production beyond this setting.