Agricultura familiar e políticas públicas: uma análise a partir de indicadores socioeconômicos

Abstract

Family farming plays a crucial role in the rural environment and interferes with the social and economic conditions of communities, promoting food security, income generation and diversification, and reducing exodus in the countryside, directly interfering with local rural development. In this sense, the actions of technical assistance and rural extension have a crucial role in supporting this public, as they become fundamental pillars in their decisions regarding their productive activities. Thus, they must be continually evaluated by specific mechanisms that demonstrate their real effectiveness, and models based on social and economic indicators become essential tools in this process. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness, in terms of improvements in social and economic conditions, of a technical assistance and rural extension action carried out with a group of families from the Barra Nova Settlement, located in the city of Sidrolândia-MS, which occurred between 2013 and 2015. For this purpose, questionnaires were used, provided by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform of the two periods, and a socio-demographic characterization of the families was carried out. Social and economic indicators were also calculated, assessing the values before and after the actions, in order to identify the real impacts that occurred in the social and economic conditions of the families. The results showed a high percentage of young people in the settlement and that women account for almost half of the properties that have a single owner. Improvements were also observed in the quantity of productive assets and constructions, types of housing, generation of income, among others. With regard to indicators, we highlight improvements in food security, housing satisfaction, rural setting, income diversification, access to credit, among others. At the same time, the need to improve the schooling of farmers, the development of associativism, the improvement of the conditions of access to lots, and the formulation of new marketing strategies for the products produced by the families should be highlighted.