Regional dynamics of rural development and family farming styles
An analysis from Rio Grande do Sul
This thesis has as theme the problematization of the interfaces, relations and determinations that may effect the transformations in household agriculture and, in to which extent that process may cause and/or influence rural development dynamics and the formation of household agriculture styles. The regions and the municipalities which represent them, which were object of investigation, were respectively: Serra – Veranópolis; Alto Uruguai - Três Palmeiras e; Missões - Salvador das Missões. The objective of this work is to comparatively investigate the similarities and differences concerning to the trading process of the household agriculture and its implications in terms of the diversification of reproductive and productive strategies, dependency and autonomy patterns and its development concerned the territorial dynamics of rural development and household agricultural styles. Four hypotheses nurture this work: i) the first points for two types of trading in household agriculture that help in explaining two development types: one that is more endogenous and autonomous (generating scope and diversification economies) and other that is more dependent and specialized (generating scale and specialization economies); ii) the second hypothesis postulates that, in order to understand and explain the differences in rural development dynamics it is necessary to identify and to analyze the reproduction strategies that are used in household agriculture;
iii) the third affirms that the development dynamics of a region is tributary of its effective capacity or in the potential of inter-sector integration of local economy, in the extent in which it allows the combination of productive activities and diversification of income sources by means of the consolidation of a market of non-agricultural work; iv) the forth hypothesis indicates that, in order to have an endogenous rural development and more autonomous household agricultural styles that are sector and inter-sector diversified, what is produced cannot be directed out of the region in which is produced and accumulate by agents that are not going to reinvest the capital where it was generated, which implies in a very vulnerable and dependent economy. Through the statistical treatment of the secondary data that were used to build the Rural Development Index (IDR), and to primary data that consist on the answers of 59 patterned questionnaires in Veranópolis; 59 in Três Palmeiras; 58 in Salvador das Missões that made possible to test the validity of the hypotheses. Data attested that the trading engendered particular rural development processes. In regions where the trading allowed other sectors of the economy to become dynamic, causing scope and diversification economies to occur, the trading agriculture insertion beyond the market of agropecuary products, one observed that the rural development is more harmonic, with the predomination of household agriculture styles, more diversified, autonomous and widely traded. However, in regions in which it was not possible to part production economy from the agriculture commodities, creating scale and specialized economies, rural development has an agricultural feature set by disharmony, in a way that prevails more specialized household agricultural styles in terms of sector as well as inter-sector that are dependent concerning to the degree of externalization, with important space variations, though. Finally, and maybe surprisingly, family universe was not as diverse and heterogeneous, excepted by some indicators that express the degree of externalization, de immobilized capital, remuneration (land and work) and income, which implies in continuous methodological improvement of the perspective on agricultural styles to catch the diversity of the household agriculture.