Políticas públicas para a agricultura familiar e a reforma agrária: o Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF) no PA Paciência em Uberlândia - MG

Abstract

The research purpose has been to analyze the effects of PRONAF in agrarian reform settlements in the city of Uberlândia-MG, considering the changes that occurred in the economic, social and ideological aspects after joining the program. For such, it was necessary a historical survey of agrarian and agricultural public policies by the Brazilian government since the 1950s, moment of transition from the current production model in the country. The agricultural modernization policy undertaken in this period has left a legacy of exclusion and numerous social problems in rural Brazil, as it was not designed for every kind of farmers. Thus, the peasant farming, also called small farming or smallscale production, neglected by the government during the agricultural modernization, returned to the official debates in the late 1980s. Social movements began to question and demand attention to the most overlooked category in the Brazilian countryside, along with international organizations that pressured the government to address the issue of small production in the country. Therefore, in 1996 it is created the first and only program for the family farmer in Brazil, the PRONAF. Starting with the PRONAF, various changes began to occur in the Brazilian countryside, including the spread of a new concept, family farming. This concept is an ideological discourse of modernity associated with small farmers/peasants, propagated by various sectors of Brazilian society. In this sense, agrarian reform settlers also are now considered to be farmers and, as such, begin to drawn into the dynamic of PRONAF. With that in mind, the research seeks to analyze the changes that occurred after the use of PRONAF in one of the settlements in the city of Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, the PA Patience, which, because it presents several particularities, along with the PRONAF, has managed to consolidate itself as one of the settlements of agrarian reform better structured and productive in the region, despite the implications of the inclusion of agrarian reform settlers in the guidelines of a public policy with capital bias. Therefore, we intend to understand the dynamics, the ideology and the effects of a public policy that seeks to insert a category that s historically excluded from the official debates, but which currently presents significant economic and social importance for the country, raising questions present in current debates about the Brazilian countryside, such as land reform, agribusiness, rural development, family and peasant farming. In addition to find out what PRONAF actually represents as a public policy or the class to which it was intended.