In July 2021, the Brazilian parliament approved a bill creating a new financial instrument for agribusiness funding through the stock market. Two and a half years later, the Investment Fund in Agroindustrial Productive Chains (Fiagro) reached a half million investors, 98% of them natural persons. From USD$2 to any amount of money, it is possible to send part of individual earnings to the biggest economic sector in Brazil. In 2024, the net worth of Fiagro achieved a net worth of USD$6.8 billion.
The agribusiness sells it as a profitable investiment. In fact, the sector is paying a high dividend yield to its investors, which draws a large amount of common citizens. However, corporations that run commodity production and exportation funded by Fiagro have been caught as land deforesters. Disguised in a long debt circuit, with the complexity of a black box, Fiagro and other private bonds are sustained by the salaries of Brazilian urban workers, in addition to foreign capital from firms and other funds. It seems that land grabbers and deforesters can be anyone in the world, even if the investor is far away from the forest.
As Fiagro is growing in an exponential performance, and as the Brazilian stock market is witnessing a boom of new investors, Bruna Bronoski proposes to open this black box to uncover the private funding instruments that benefit from the increasing financial culture among the general population. Everybody wants to receive dividends from the stock market, but are they aware of the destiny of their money?