IBGE releases today, April 30, 2015, the first part of the project Rural Regions, designed to create a regional subdivision of Brazil based on the geographic dynamics agricultural industry producion in the national territory. In this release, the study presents the 104 Rural Regions already defined, besides a conceptual study which encompasses the Brazilian territory dynamics and the geographic methodology, which joins statistical and cartographic information and leads to an integrated and comprehensive view of rural – but not strictly agricultural – reality.

The list of 104 Rural Regions and more relevant information can be seen at
https://www.ibge.gov.br/home/geociencias/geografia/default_regioes_rurais.shtm

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In order to define the Rural Regions, IBGE adopted regional division concepts in accordance with area and regional studies (or areas of influence) based on networks. The fomer define spaces of contiguity and land use, and the second, polarized spaces structured by functions and flows. Although different, the concepts do nor exclude each other, and their combination generates some of the most complex and encompassing regionalization processes.

The project presents a portrait of 104 Rural Regions designated by one or more cities which articultae dthese regions. The cities have been classified according to their importance in the Brazilian urban network, which allows a combined reading of the Rural Regions identified by the survey with urban centers of local, regional and national importance.

Besides presenting an integrated view of the rural space with national urban centers, the project also included major Indian Land and Conservation Units, which constitute nowadays, a complex mosaic of the Brazilian territory that goes beyond agricultural production, only. That occurs, mainly, in the North and Central West Regions, mainly in the North and Central West, especially for the states of Amazonas, Pará Mato Grosso, Acre, Amapá and Roraima.

As a result, the project Rural Regions is the latest contribution to the process of integration of statistical information to information generated in the realm of geographic analyzes and studies relative to national agriculture. In this respect, besides the main objective of building a regionalization of the Brazilian urban space and contribute to the release of census data, the project is also expected to provide subsidies for the country territory planning through the choice and location of policies and public and private actions conceived in a strategic way.