This article reviews the economic structure of Brazilian agriculture during the years of constrained industrialization, by providing a descriptive analysis of the sector’s main economic data. It reconsiders the debate of the 1950s and 1960s on the roles played by agriculture in national economic development; and it shows that the growth of agricultural production in Brazil was hindered by the deterioration of the terms of trade between agriculture and agribusiness, which was also associated with miserly rural wages. These factors rendered agricultural modernization relatively disadvantageous in Brazil, which raises questions as to the functionality of agrarian reform in those years.