Agricultura familiar no Brasil: mercantilização, dependência e a cultura do empresariamento na juventude rural de Linhares-ES

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand how the commodification of familiar agriculture has interfered in Linhares - ES small farmers’ way of life and social movements. Such process tends to be based around entrepeneurship, individualism and competition. A bibliographical study has been made on how a commodity export model has shaped the brazilian agricultural market, as well as public policies regarding the sector. A multiple case study has also been made in two local farming communities in order to observe how such process affects their daily lives, in the form of discussion groups involving 21 small farmers, 12 of them being male and 9 female. This research shows us that familiar agriculture has grown inside a market which it cannot be fully integrated with. This partial integration has contributed to a loss of autonomy in economic and cultural aspects, as well as how social classes are formed within the community. The study also shows that public policies regarding the agricultural sector as a whole have prioritized the production of export commodities, which has led to familiar agriculture being integrated in a dependent manner. This modernizing integration has changed the cooperation ladscape, resulting in commodification models in which individualism and technocracy rule, interfering in the community’s way of life and knowledge sharing, especially among local farming youth.