GIRLAINE M. A. MÂNICA KUBE AND THE LAW THAT GROWS FROM THE LAND

From a childhood spent among Nelore cattle, the smell of wet soil and the quiet rhythm of early mornings in the countryside to her consolidation as one of the most innovative voices in Law applied to agribusiness, the trajectory of Girlaine M. A. Mânica Kube is the story of someone who never accepted that the distance between the farm gate and the courtroom was an unbridgeable gap. For her, these two worlds have always been connected: what happens on the farm reverberates in lawsuits, contracts and judicial decisions; what is decided in the case files changes, in some measure, how the herd is managed, how the land is occupied and how family assets are protected.

From a very young age, Girlaine learned that the countryside is not just a productive space, but a place of memory, affection and responsibility. Her cattle-raising family, life with Nelore herds and the routines of rural life formed the basis of a keen and practical understanding of what it means to produce food in a country where agribusiness is one of the main economic pillars. Each season of the year, each harsher drought, each period of heavy rain taught her something about risk, planning and resilience. Without using this technical vocabulary, young Girlaine was already grasping in practice concepts that would later become fundamental in her legal work: management, predictability, responsibility and long-term vision.

When she decided to study Law, it was not to abandon the countryside, but to understand it in another language. She realized that behind every deed, lease, partnership, probate proceeding and dispute there were stories of rural families trying to reconcile tradition, survival and future. Law school opened a new front: the possibility of translating into legal language what the farm had taught her intuitively. The lawyer who emerged from that process would not be someone distant from rural reality, but a bridge between worlds.

It is from this convergence between experience in the field and legal training that the book No Campo e nos Tribunais – Do Direito à Inovação no Agronegócio (In the Fields and in the Courts – From Law to Innovation in Agribusiness) is born, a work that condenses more than three decades of activity in farms, law offices, hearings, contractual negotiations and management projects. The book, which reaches the public in 2025, is not merely an autobiographical account nor an exclusively technical treatise. It presents itself as a path: the journey of a woman who learned to see Law not as a brake on rural activity, but as a platform for autonomy, innovation and protection.

Right in the first pages, the reader encounters the narrative of a hybrid trajectory. Girlaine recounts how she balanced the start of her law practice with the acquisition of Fazenda Nova Alegria back in 1989, and how this direct management experience was essential to understanding the gaps between legal theory and the real life of producers. At the same time that she drafted motions, took part in hearings and studied doctrine, she had to deal with very concrete challenges: costs, employees, pastures, rains, droughts, taxes, succession, neighbors, partnerships. It was there that she discovered, in practice, that Law could be much more than a tool of defense in lawsuits: it could become an instrument for planning, risk reduction and the creation of new forms of productive organization.

With clear, sensitive and at the same time sophisticated writing, Girlaine invites the reader into a universe where each contractual clause is connected to a management decision; each tax choice has repercussions on the farm’s investment capacity; each succession strategy helps determine the future of an entire family. Instead of viewing the rural producer simply as a party in legal proceedings, she sees him or her as the protagonist of a complex ecosystem involving environmental legislation, labor rules, tax regulations, credit policies, support programs and, increasingly, sustainability and governance requirements.

Throughout the first part of the work, it becomes evident that No Campo e nos Tribunais is not a book written from inside an isolated office, but by someone who knows the smell of the farmyard and the chill of the courtroom. Girlaine recounts striking episodes of her work, without romanticizing the difficulties. She tells of the creation of Agropecuária Flor da Mata, in partnership with her brothers; the tensions inherent in any shared management; the breaking up of the partnership and the decision to take sole control of Fazenda Vista Alegre, transforming it into a laboratory of technical and legal modernization.

Each moment in this trajectory is presented not as a simple biographical fact, but as a starting point for legal and managerial reflection. When she describes her early litigation experience, for example, Girlaine shows how the conflicts that reached the courts in fact revealed poorly structured contracts, excessive informality or sheer ignorance of legal obligations. That awareness led her to devote herself even more intensively to preventive law practice, strengthening the contractual dimension of her work.

From there, the book presents some of her most emblematic cases, including the development of the forage sale contract, a model that, in certain situations, replaced traditional rural leasing. By legally reconfiguring the relationship between the landowner and the producer who uses the pasture, the contract made it possible to reduce tax impacts, bring transparency to operations, formalize flows of invoices and, above all, recognize pasture grass as a strategic commodity within the logic of beef production. The solution, which earned recognition from tax authorities, became a practical reference and consolidated Girlaine’s image as a creative lawyer, capable of finding lawful openings to improve producers’ economic efficiency.

But the author does not limit herself to celebrating her achievements. In No Campo e nos Tribunais, she also lays bare the dilemmas, lessons and uncertainties that have marked this journey. She speaks about moments when difficult decisions had to be made, whether in business restructuring, in redefining partnerships or in delicate family succession processes. She shows that, very often, the real challenge lies not only in knowing the law but in mediating expectations, conflicts of interest and emotions deeply rooted in rural family histories.
One of the most powerful aspects of the work is the way Girlaine connects her personal story to the discussion about the place of women in agribusiness and in Law. In a sector traditionally dominated by male figures, both in the management of farms and in rural law offices, she gradually built a position of technical authority and leadership.

In the book, Girlaine recounts how, on many occasions, she had to prove her competence twice over: as a lawyer and as a cattle rancher. She dealt with skeptical looks at auctions, business meetings, hearings and negotiations where it was not always expected that a woman would be the person responsible for strategic and patrimonial decisions. Rather than withdrawing from that scene, she turned her very presence into a statement: it is possible to be a woman, a jurist, an entrepreneur and a leading player in cattle ranching, without renouncing sensitivity or technical rigor.

This gender dimension does not appear as an abstract banner, but as a concrete part of her narrative. The author shows how managing Fazenda Vista Alegre and leading complex processes involving contracts, disputes and restructurings gradually built her image as a lawyer-entrepreneur, able to move confidently between spreadsheets, deeds, the cattle pen, the courtroom and meetings with accountants, veterinarians, agronomists and consultants.

By addressing this issue, the book also dialogues with a new generation of women who today occupy leadership positions in farms, cooperatives, trade associations and agribusiness arbitration chambers. No Campo e nos Tribunais thus becomes not only a personal story but a sort of mirror and inspiration, showing that women’s presence in the countryside can be, at once, technically solid, firm and deeply human.
Although it springs from a singular experience, Girlaine’s book has a collective ambition. It speaks to rural producers, lawyers, jurists, students, accountants, consultants and public and private managers who want to understand how Law can become a strategic ally of agribusiness. It is not a hermetic treatise reserved for specialists, nor a merely motivational narrative. The work seeks to combine conceptual rigor, concrete examples and engaging storytelling, building a roadmap for those who deal daily with legal decisions in the countryside.

By the end of this first section, the reader has understood that No Campo e nos Tribunais is, above all, a defense of the idea that legal knowledge must not be accessory, but structural in rural management. Law appears as the silent foundation of decisions ranging from the choice of tax regime to the drafting of partnership agreements, the formalization of business entities, environmental regularization, the purchase and sale of animals, the implementation of new management technologies, the establishment of family holding companies and succession from one generation to the next.

Having lived in her own skin the consequences of sound and misguided decisions, Girlaine invites the reader to abandon the notion of law as a distant obstacle and to see it instead as a tool of freedom. Freedom to plan, to innovate, to grow safely, to protect assets and, above all, to ensure that the legacy built over decades does not dissolve for lack of legal organization.

LAW BEYOND THE CODES: WHEN THE LAW LEARNS TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE

If Girlaine’s childhood was marked by the silent learning of the ways of the land, her youth was shaped by another kind of discovery: the dense and often inaccessible language of Law. When she entered university, she found codes, doctrines, theories and case law that at first seemed far removed from the day-to-day challenges of a farm. Yet as she progressed in her studies, she began to recognize, between the lines of civil, tax, environmental and agrarian legislation, the same conflicts she had witnessed in real life: disputes over land boundaries, informal contracts, unresolved successions, labor problems, documentary uncertainty.

Little by little, Girlaine realized that her true vocation would be precisely to build a bridge between these two universes. Rather than accepting that Law remain locked inside a purely technical discourse, she decided that her legal practice would focus on translating the law into the producer’s reality, deciphering concepts and turning abstractions into concrete decisions. This choice appears very clearly in No Campo e nos Tribunais: the book is, to a great extent, the narrative of how Law can stop being a maze and become a map.

In the chapters devoted to law practice, Girlaine describes her time in litigation, the arena where many agribusiness conflicts come to the surface: oral agreements that were never formalized, partnerships abruptly terminated, leases with unclear obligations, family quarrels over inheritance, disputes over environmental liabilities, unexpected tax assessments. In handling these cases, she realized that in many situations the lawsuit was the final chapter of a story that could have been written differently had there been preventive legal advice from the start.
This realization led her to shift the focus of her work: without abandoning litigation, she began to invest increasingly in drafting contracts, structuring businesses and organizing the documentation of rural properties and companies. No Campo e nos Tribunais describes this move in detail, explaining, for example, how a simple alignment meeting with the family that owns the farm before planting season can prevent lengthy lawsuits later on; how clarity about who decides, who is liable, who manages and how results are distributed can preserve relationships and assets.

The book emphasizes that formalizing does not mean distrusting; it means protecting. In contexts with a strong oral culture, where one’s word has always carried great weight, many producers view written contracts as a sign of coldness or lack of trust. Girlaine therefore seeks to reframe this perception: for her, a contract is, above all, the written memory of a shared will, an instrument that records what the parties agreed upon at a moment of consensus so that, in times of conflict or forgetfulness, they can recall the foundations of their agreement.

When discussing succession planning, the author goes even deeper. She shows that the Brazilian countryside is full of families that have built considerable assets over decades, often at immense sacrifice, but that avoid talking about inheritance, division of property and the continuity of the business. When death arrives—and it always does—the combination of grief, lack of planning and disagreements among heirs can turn what was built with such effort into a landscape of litigation and fragmentation. The book proposes another logic: discussing succession while everyone is still alive, with transparency and the support of legal and accounting advisors, can be an act of love and responsibility.
At this point, No Campo e nos Tribunais presents examples of estate-planning processes in which holding companies, shareholders’ agreements, lifetime donations with reserved usufruct, family protocols and wills were used as tools to preserve the unity of rural activity, define roles, prevent conflict and make sure the farm did not become just “another piece of property to be divided at the registry office.” Girlaine explains how, in such cases, Law reveals itself as an architecture of the future, building bridges between generations.

Another important dimension addressed in the work is compliance in the countryside. In a context where environmental regulations are increasingly sophisticated, labor demands have intensified and consumer markets require traceability, animal welfare and proof of origin, the producer who ignores these issues becomes vulnerable to sanctions, embargoes, loss of credit and reputational damage. Girlaine shows how her work came to include building routines and procedures: drafting internal policies, revising employment contracts, ensuring compliance with environmental rules, regularizing legal reserves and permanent preservation areas, and organizing documents for audits.

“The term compliance,” she writes, “may sound distant, but it is nothing more than the conscious decision to walk in accordance with the law and to demonstrate this clearly to the State, the market and society.” Accordingly, the book introduces the concept of rural governance, arguing that farms and agribusiness companies, regardless of size, can adopt basic organizational principles: clear allocation of responsibilities, accurate record-keeping, accountability, transparency in relations with third parties and observance of technical norms.

Throughout these reflections, what emerges is a Law that overflows the cold text of the codes. For Girlaine, legal norms only acquire meaning when they engage with concrete reality. It is not enough to recite statutory articles: one must understand how they apply to a cow-calf, stocker and feeder operation, to an irrigated farming property, to a feedlot, to a company that sells inputs or provides services to the sector. The book thus stitches doctrine and practice together, always grounding discussions in real-world examples.

The strength of this approach lies precisely in the fact that Girlaine writes as someone who has stood on both sides of the counter. She knows what it is like to see the rain come late, the price of cattle drop, an unexpected cost appear. She also knows what it is like to receive a court summons, respond to an inspection, explain to a client why a lawsuit drags on. By bringing these perspectives together, No Campo e nos Tribunais proposes a type of law practice that does not speak only to judges and colleagues, but above all to those who are in the day-to-day work of the countryside, making decisions that affect people, animals, land and numbers.

REAL CASES, LIVING CONTRACTS: WHEN LEGAL CREATIVITY CHANGES EVERYDAY LIFE ON THE FARM

One of the most captivating aspects of Girlaine’s book is the way it is anchored in real stories, concrete cases that help the reader visualize the practical impact of legal solutions. Just as in Luis Felipe’s engineering narrative hospitals, data centers and historic buildings become learning spaces, in No Campo e nos Tribunais farms, offices and registry bureaus become stages of transformation.

Among these cases, the forage sale contract occupies a central place. Girlaine recounts how, on observing the traditional model of rural leasing, she realized that many producers were facing disproportionate tax burdens and structural insecurity in their business relationships. In operations whose main objective was using pasture for cattle fattening, the legal framework treated everything as simple “land rental,” which meant incidence of taxes as rental income and did not reflect the real economic nature of the transaction.

Troubled by this distortion, Girlaine began to ask herself: what if the focus of the contract shifted from the land to the feed it produced? After all, what was truly being made available to the cattle owner was not just bare land, but grass that had been sown, managed, fertilized and cared for. Delving into legislation, doctrine and accounting practice, she conceived a contract model in which the relationship between farm owner and partner is structured as purchase and sale of forage, with product invoices issued and tax classification to match.

The book shows, step by step, how this paradigm shift made it possible to reduce tax burden lawfully, bring greater transparency to operations, organize payment flows, document more clearly the movement of animals and inputs and, on top of that, strengthen the producer’s position in audits, inspections and negotiations with banks. Official recognition of the model by tax authorities in Mato Grosso do Sul gave the solution not only legal security but also a multiplier effect: other producers began adopting it and adapting it to their own realities.

More than describing the case as a personal achievement, Girlaine treats it as an example of what she calls “responsible creativity”: the ability to read the law in depth, understand legitimate margins, dialogue with accountants and consultants, test hypotheses and arrive at a format that benefits the producer without violating the legal order. For her, legal innovation does not mean “finding a loophole” but proposing paths consistent with the legal system, which make the business more efficient and sustainable.

Other cases in the book involve corporate reorganization in rural companies that, as they grew, began to accumulate risks: partners with indistinct liabilities, lack of formal agreements, confusion between personal and business assets, difficulty in obtaining better credit conditions. In detailed narratives, Girlaine explains how drafting partnership contracts, shareholders’ agreements, meeting minutes and governance protocols transformed the everyday life of these organizations.

In one such story, a farm run by brothers lived under constant tension: disagreements over investments, suspicion about the use of funds, lack of clarity about owners’ compensation, and uncertainty about what would happen when the next generation took over. Through legal and family mediation, it became possible to build a shareholders’ agreement that established rules for decision-making, entry and exit of heirs, profit distribution, sale of assets and hiring professional managers. The result was reduced conflict, increased trust and the possibility of planning the future more calmly.

There are also cases connected to Fazenda Vista Alegre, which, under Girlaine’s sole leadership, was turned into a modernization laboratory. The book describes the implementation of rotational grazing, semi-feedlot systems, creep feeding and genetic improvement programs using fixed-time artificial insemination (FTAI). Each technical innovation brought with it a legal question: how to formalize partnerships with nutrition and genetics companies? How to structure contracts with service providers? How to adapt tax and accounting records to the new practices? How to ensure that partnerships would not result in hidden labor or tax liabilities?

Girlaine shows how, in this context, Law functioned almost like an invisible irrigation system, ensuring that technological changes were supported by firm legal foundations. She describes, for example, the importance of clear contracts with handling teams, the delineation of responsibilities in crop–livestock integration projects, environmental regularization of feedlot structures, well licensing and water-use permits. The reader thus realizes that no technical innovation is sustainable for long if it is not tied to equally robust legal care.
Another group of cases concerns succession planning and family mediation. In accounts that preserve confidentiality but still convey the emotional complexity involved, Girlaine tells of families that sought her advice to organize transfer of control between generations. In some situations the patriarch resisted discussing inheritance; in others the heirs feared that dividing assets would fragment the farm; there were also cases in which family members wanted different paths—some keen to stay in agriculture, others wanting to pursue careers in the city.
Instead of imposing ready-made solutions, Girlaine began to work as a facilitator of dialogue, combining listening, legal knowledge and sensitivity to build mechanisms such as family holding companies, lifetime donations, wills, shareholders’ agreements and conduct protocols. The book stresses that these instruments are not mere formalities: they help make expectations explicit, set criteria, reduce resentment and create a clearer playing field for everyone involved.

These concrete cases give substance to the work’s central thesis: when properly understood, Law is part of the productive routine, not just an emergency intervention. By showcasing contracts, hearings, negotiations, inspections, environmental audits and family assemblies, No Campo e nos Tribunais turns the reader into a witness to how legal decisions can indeed change the course of a farm, a company and a lineage.

A PHILOSOPHY FOR LAW IN AGRIBUSINESS: GUIDE, MANIFESTO AND INVITATION TO THE FUTURE

At its deepest level, No Campo e nos Tribunais is not only a book about legal techniques applied to the countryside, but about a philosophy of practice. Girlaine starts from the conviction that Law is not neutral: every contract drafted, every lawsuit filed, every piece of advice given to a client has concrete effects on people, animals, territories and possible futures. That is why she insists that lawyers, especially in agribusiness, must see themselves as agents of transformation, not merely as fixers of bureaucracy.

Her philosophy rests on several pillars. The first is commitment to reality. For her, any consultancy that ignores the specific context of the farm—its size, history, internal culture, financial situation and level of organization—is doomed to produce formal but useless solutions. The book argues that good legal counsel begins with listening: walking around the property, understanding workflows, talking to managers, family members and employees, observing how decisions are actually made. Only then does one propose contracts, reorganizations and succession plans.

The second pillar is ethics as a condition for legitimacy. When dealing with sensitive issues such as taxes, succession, environmental and labor liability, it is easy to be tempted by quick-fix shortcuts. Girlaine, however, reiterates that there is no sustainability without integrity. Solutions that “work” today but break the law or rest on fragile simulations will tend to explode in the future, often with devastating consequences. The creativity she advocates is always within the bounds of legality, exploring legitimate margins without betraying the spirit of the norms.
The third pillar is long-term vision. Agribusiness by nature deals with large cycles: from harvest to harvest, from generation to generation. Girlaine argues that legal organization must reflect this temporality. It is not just about solving today’s problem, but creating conditions for the assets, productive culture and relationships built over decades to be maintained and renewed. That is why she emphasizes succession planning, governance, thorough records and solid documentation.

From these pillars, No Campo e nos Tribunais assumes—much like Luis Felipe’s book—a dual identity: it is both a guide and a manifesto.
As a guide, it offers readers concrete tools: it explains contractual structures; comments on lease, partnership and forage-sale models; discusses tax regimes; introduces notions of compliance; describes the stages of succession planning; and points out key issues in negotiations with banks, buyers and suppliers. All of this in accessible language that does not require the reader to be a lawyer in order to grasp the essentials.
As a manifesto, the book calls for a change of mindset. It urges rural producers, lawyers, accountants and managers to stop seeing Law merely as a “mandatory cost” and start viewing it as an investment in freedom—freedom to take risks responsibly, to innovate safely, to expand businesses without the constant fear that a hidden liability or unexpected lawsuit will topple everything. Throughout the pages, Girlaine reiterates that getting legally organized is an act of courage and of love for one’s own life project.

CONVERSATION WITH GIRLAINE

At the end of the work, Girlaine answers questions that help synthesize her vision. Below is a version of this conversation that captures the spirit of the book:

1. Girlaine, why did you feel this was the right moment to write No Campo e nos Tribunais?

Because after more than thirty years juggling office work, farm management and courtrooms, I realized that many of the recurring pains I saw could have been avoided with qualified information. I witnessed assets being lost, families falling apart and promising businesses failing not due to lack of work or productive capacity, but due to lack of legal organization. At the same time, I saw incredible transformations when Law was integrated into the farm’s daily routine as an ally. I felt it was time to gather these experiences in a book that could reach more people, in direct language without losing depth.

1. In your view, what makes a legal solution truly relevant in agribusiness?

Relevant is what works in practice and generates lasting positive impact. There is no point in creating sophisticated structures that no one can operate, or contracts so complex that the producer himself doesn’t understand what he signed. A good legal solution is one that reduces risk, organizes relationships, makes management easier and, at the same time, respects the culture of that family, that business, that region. It must be technically solid, but also understandable and executable.

1. What is currently the greatest legal challenge for Brazilian agribusiness?

I believe the greatest challenge is reconciling growth and innovation with an increasingly demanding regulatory environment. Producers are under pressure from productivity demands, rising costs, climate change, market requirements and, simultaneously, from environmental, labor, tax and compliance rules. The risk is to see the law only as an enemy. My effort—and the book’s—is to show that Law can be the opposite of that: it can be the foundation for safer, more sustainable growth that respects people and the land.

1. How has your personal history as a woman, lawyer and producer shaped your view of Law?

It influences everything. Living the countryside from within, feeling what it means to face drought, negotiate with meatpackers, handle payroll and, at the same time, draft legal documents, attend hearings and study doctrine gave me a very concrete sense of what works and what doesn’t. Being a woman in spaces that are still very male-dominated also taught me the importance of calm firmness, preparation and consistency. That is reflected in the book: I write to show that it is possible to occupy these spaces competently without giving up sensitivity or ethics.

1. What message do you hope to leave for those who read your book?

I want readers to finish with the feeling that Law is not a distant obstacle, but part of building their own life project. I hope they realize that each legal decision—a contract, a registration, a succession plan—is a way of caring for the people they love, the land they manage, the story they received and will leave behind. If I can help producers, lawyers and students see Law as an ally in the search for autonomy, justice and prosperity in the countryside, I will have fulfilled my purpose.

A BOOK TO TURN KNOWLEDGE INTO LEGACY

On finishing No Campo e nos Tribunais – Do Direito à Inovação no Agronegócio, it becomes clear that Girlaine M. A. Mânica Kube has not written only about her own trajectory but about a way of understanding Brazilian agribusiness. She shows that in a sector often associated solely with production and export numbers there exists a dense universe of human relationships, potential conflicts, ethical challenges and decisions that shape territories for decades.

With accessible language, concrete examples and solid foundations, the book becomes both a working tool and a source of reflection. Rural producers find pathways to organize their properties more safely; lawyers discover new possibilities for creative and ethical practice; students realize that Agrarian Law is a living, constantly evolving field; public and private managers gain a better understanding of the complexity of decisions made “behind the farm gate” that nonetheless affect the economy and society as a whole.

More than simply recounting, Girlaine issues a call. A call to responsibility, to organization, to dialogue between generations, to the effective presence of women in the countryside, to the integration of empirical knowledge and technical expertise. Above all, she calls for a broader understanding that the future of Brazilian agribusiness will not be defined only by production technologies, but by the quality of the legal and ethical choices we make today.

No Campo e nos Tribunais is thus an invitation for Law to stop being seen as a burden and to be recognized instead as the invisible structure that supports growth, protects assets, fosters innovation and contributes to a fairer, more sustainable and more prosperous countryside. A book that is born from the land, passes through the courts and returns to the farm gate with a clear message: when legal knowledge and field wisdom walk together, everything is transformed—the farm, the family, the business and the very way we inhabit Brazil.

Title: IN THE FIELD AND IN THE COURTS
Subtitle: From Law to Innovation in Agribusiness
Author: Girlaine M. A. Mânica Kube
Genre: Agrarian Law / Rural Management / Entrepreneurship
Format: Print and Digital (PDF)
Publication Year: 2025
Available at: https://a.co/d/5SYm7p8