AbstractBrazil's development into a major producer, crusher, and exporter of soybeans and soybean products formented an agribusiness complex of major proportions during the 1960s and 1970s. The soybean industry policy, in many ways, has had considerable impact on parts of rural Brazil. The Brazilian experience with the soybean industry provides an interesting example of an attempt by a country to integrate agribusiness with domestic social policies in a semi‐private economy which is developing rapidly. It also provides an example of government intervention at all levels of an industry— production, marketing, and export—in order to attain social and economic policy