When examining the behavior of the agricultural area in the postwar years, it is possible to specify two distinct times: geographical growth from 1950 to 1970 and traditional modernization, from 1970 to the present. In the simultaneous postwar years, Brazilian agriculture included an export area that relied heavily on coffee but also on cotton, sugar, and a few minor commodities, and a semisubsistence area that produced for the domestic market. At the time, the nation's population, its per capita income, and its urban area did not yet impose a large demand on the agricultural sector.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the main crops in the modern portion were cocoa, cotton, rice, sugarcane, oranges, corn, soybeans, and wheat; those in the orthodox portion included beans, manioc (cassava), bananas, peanuts, and coffee. Brazil is also one of the largest exporters of guavas, lemons, mangoes, passion fruit, tangerines, and tobacco.

Brazil's farm animal area went through a similar process of selective modernization. Until the early 1970s, it remained quite backward; its development relied chiefly on the incorporation of more land and animals into production. Following the development of agribusiness complexes, farm animal production processes also changed. major differences exist between the modern and the orthodox portions of the beef-cattle, poultry, and swine subsectors--the nation's main farm animal subsectors.