A percepção de agricultores familiares acerca da preservação e utilização de recursos naturais em propriedades rurais do município de Santa Cruz do Sul, RS, Brasil.

Abstract

Considering the close contact between the rural activities and nature, adding to its value through the production of renewable resources, many times vulnerable to the excessive exploitation and inadequate handling, the acquisition of instruments that permit the systemic analysis of the interrelation of man and nature is relevant and necessary, in order to formulate corrective intervention strategies that favor this co-evolution, many times unsustainable and degrading. Based on these propositions and considering the reality of the Municipality of Santa Cruz do Sul, which has an unsustainable social and environmental development evolved in the tobacco production, and looks for alternatives to this dominant conventional agricultural model, this research investigated the aspects related to the environmental perception of two distinct groups of farmers. The first, constituted by farmers linked to the Rural Fair of the Municipality of Santa Cruz do Sul, are directed to the use of conventional production techniques. The second group, in the other hand, is made of farmers associated to the Capa/Ecovale, institution based on the principles of organic agriculture. In this manner, through the data produced through the interviews applied with farmers, as well as the field observations made in the visits at their land properties, the reality of the distinct groups was analyzed in relation to the environmental preservation and utilization of natural resources. In this sense, we looked for the contribution to the formulation of political and educational strategies that help to the rural planning more adequate to the region, in the context of the Sustainable Regional Development. This way, it was possible to infer that the overall scenario traced is the lack in educational measures of long term related to the environmental education, as well as disregard with the alternatives of sustainable development that are put in practice in the region nowadays. Besides, the adverse role of the institutions, the marketing interests that direct the decisions and the options made by farmers are related to the lack of education. In this sense, we must highlight the case of organic farmers are hostages of the incoherence caused by the lack of public policies that support the sector, as well as the discrimination in relation to the group, as related in some excerpts of the transcribed interviews. As for the arbitrariness, some of the initiatives of the farmers in both groups seem to be promising, as in the case of investments in diversification, native area preservation and even the susceptibility that some of the conventional farmers showed in productive conversion. In the perceptive comparison between the two groups, in general, we observed a greater predisposition to the preservation and rational utilization of natural resources by the group of organic farms, which, in a certain way, was previewed. Yet, related to the perceptive character, we can cite the role of youngsters in the productive conversion, the gender influence in the management of natural resources, the role of the public institutions, as well as the nongovernmental ones in the stimuli to the new perspectives to the sustainable regional development.