Produção e reprodução do "atraso" da agricultura piauiense: a pequena produção agrícola.

Abstract

The thesis main aim is the study of Piauí's agricultural sector and its petty commodity production, analyzing specifically the general conditions of production and reproduction of its backwardness ultil yhe 80's. It is also verified and emphasized the role played by the petty commodity productin in the capitalist development, in the Brazilian context, which created and articulated a modern agriculture and backward ane, being the later indirectly subordinated to the capitalist motion. In order to achieve the main objective, the founding elements of Piauí's economy (cattleraising and extractive) are analyzed as determinants of an agicultural structure supported by the petty commodity production, inside or outside the large properly of land, allowing the agriculture to remain backward until the 50's. Thereafter, the productive structure based on small prodution mushroomed, becoming this primitive activity the main mean of maintenance and reproduction availlable to the petty commodity producers. To the large landowner, the later became useful as long as there is increasing land value, land rent, commercial profit and cheap labor force. Finally, it is demonstrated that the petty commodity production still assumes the character of small exploration, even in the 70's, a benchamark in the process of the backwardness here stressed. Using data from the national census, it was demonstrated the stage of backwardness witnessed by Piauí agricultural sector. It concludes that the understanding of petty commodity production in a regional context, where it is generated and reproduced its backwardness, requires the search of its transformation inside the logic of capitalism.