Agricultura familiar e redes de desenvolvimento territorial rural: um estudo empírico sobre agroindústria familiar rural no oeste do Paraná

Abstract

The present study has for objective to analyze the organization of the production of the family agroindustry as strategy of rural development of the family agriculture. The unit of analysis is the family producer and the research has for base the perception of the same ones on the agroindustrial practice, the qualitative participation in the income of the family and the participation of the producers in the vertical and horizontal nets of rural development. The research was accomplished with producers from the commercialization centers of the cities of: Corbélia, Matelândia, Missal, Nova Aurora, Vera Cruz do Oeste and Sede Alvorada, district of Cascavel. Due to the selective process of modernization, in the 1970 s structural transformations happened in the Brazilian farming, such as great landed concentration and increase of the rural and urban poverty due to the bulky rural exodus. That process of technical base transformation creates new forms of organization of the production and marks the passage of the Brazilian farming from the called "rural complex" to the "agribusiness complex" (AC) in the 1970 s and the 1980 s. Answering to that group of transformations suffered because of the rural and urban occupations in the last decades, non-agricultural activities grow in Brazil in the rural space. Still in the 1970 s, the family production is articulated by the conventional agribusiness and passes through an exclusion process in the 1980 s, due to a deep transformation in the form of operating the vertical nets of rural development. The rural family agribusiness is constituted in an unfolding of this transformation process. In the 1990 s a space of legitimacy of strategies of the rural agro-industrialization is created, where the processing of food was the main point for the development of the family agroindustry and its insertion in the market. In this paper it is used the theoretical approach of the nets in the analysis of the rural development that is directly linked to the family agriculture. The horizontal nets converge for the new territorial focus of the rural development, that comprehends the historical roots of a territory, the social interaction, the individuals' capacity, of the local organizations in promoting dynamic connections capable to value the traditions and the potential of the local space. The data of the research reveals that from the total income of the researched properties, 42,55% come from agricultural activities; 57,45% from non-agricultural activities (43,38% originated from the agroindustry, 7,5% originated from other activities and 6,57% from retirement). The labor that prevails in the family agroindustry is the female work, representing 61%, and the male work 39%. The products are traded in the local and regional commerce. The study comes to confirm that rural family producers use the strategy of the agricultural industrializaiton of alimentary products, as a survival and income increasing way, guaranteeing, in certain way, the family unit in the rural way.