A agroindústria familiar como estratégia para o desenvolvimento regional.

Abstract

This dissertation deals with the situation confronted by family farmers due to changes promoted by the agricultural technological modernization, mainly after the “soybean phenomenon”, in the mid 1970’s, when the northwest of the Rio Grande do Sul state was the stage of significant changes in the form of production of family farmers, with a large number of them being forced to abandon their farms and look for other reproduction alternatives, due to the difficulty to absorb new technologies and their adaptation to the new production pattern. For this study, three investigative methods were combined. The exploratory research was used for a thematic overview. The historical review meant to understand the relation between the State and family farming in Brazilian history. In the documentation analysis we identified how sustainable development is understood in the official discourse and by social actors; in the interviews we tried to enhance the documental analysis. This study is a case study, focused upon the county of Crissiumal and the development alternatives followed by the community. We tried to discuss how family farmers of Crissiumal reorganized the mechanisms of their social reproduction without depending on the technological modernization and without abandoning the rural principles that ordered their way of life and their behavior. The analysis of the family agroindustry as a strategy of sustainability and its role in the regional development process, showed how this production alternative allowed that the small producers remained in their properties and in their communities, contributing for a process of endogenous development, reconquering its dignity and self-esteem. We found out that family agroindustry has fulfilled a significant role in the regional development, consisting in a local activity which at the same time generates income and mobilizes local sectors. We tried also to demonstrate that transformations which occurred in the rural scenario of Crissiumal county cannot be understood as a consequence of the modernization process or of the Green Revolution, but as a strategy of viabilization of family farming in place of the situation in which the sector was. For this understanding we used an analytical reference that allowed a new interpretation of its development dynamics. The dynamic is characterized through the relationship between public and private actors, the county government and the society together with the local productive system of family farming. Another intention of this research was to contribute for understanding the recent social changes of the state’s society, consisting in the tentative to analyse the peculiar form of relation between the labor and productions strategies between family farmers and the social transformations that occurred in Crissiumal society.