Efeitos socioeconômicos da crise da cotonicultura agravada com a praga do "bicudo": estudo de caso: município de Ingá, PB.

Abstract

The present work has, as object of analysis, the relations between the declining tendency of cotoniculture, the main agricultural product of the semi - arid region, and the changes that are observed in the socioeconomic structures of regional agriculture. The fundamental question that guides this work is to find out how the main survival activity of the majority of the semi-arid peasants takes place within a class society and is marked by profound antagonisms, depending, absolutely, on the current market and policies designed to protect exclusively the interests of large landowners, agro-industries and banks. The original idea of ​​the work arose during the Master's course, generated from my family and professional connection with the agriculture of the semi-arid and, particularly, the impact produced in the rural environment by the convergence of a prolonged drought with the appearance of a plague (that of Bicudo) of unknown destructive effects. In order to analyze the influence of this new (biological) phenomenon on the agricultural system prevailing in the semi-arid, we have to clarify the socio-economic nature of this particular system and of regional underdevelopment, generally explain why, despite the considerable However, the quantitative growth registered in recent years by the regional economy, despite the different special development programs and the large investments channeled by the Federal Government to the Northeast, the regional economy and, especially, semi-arid agriculture, are all the more vulnerable than before "natural" adversities. Looking for the answer to this question, we come in contact with the literature that critically analyzes the "model", the economic strategy and the corresponding agricultural policies, trying to unravel the nature of the relations between the type of capital accumulation accumulation and the increase of the inequalities and social contradictions. In this way, we came across some theoretical and practical questions that led us to organize this work for a reexamination of the correlation between conservative modernization "(expansion of sugarcane and extensive cattle raising) and the gradual The work on the problem outlined above is structured in five chapters, that in the first we are concerned with summarizing the theoretical points that serve as a reference for the delimitation of the subject and for the In the first part of this chapter, we explain, from the literature on the subject, our vision of the economic "model", the agricultural development strategy and the Northeast question, seeking to define the specificity of the Paraíba agriculture, basically, in the division of the rural worker in relation to land and other means of production and land tenure and rural power structures. We try to show that such a split becomes radicalized as capitalism advances. In the second chapter of the chapter we note that the process of concentration of land and capital takes place within the framework of an oligopolistic organization of markets that increasingly exclude and marginalize small producers, the labor force in general. Government policies appear as ways in which the latifundio and agroindustrial complex, resulting from the monopoly industrialization model, try to overcome the worsening of economic imbalances and serious social contradictions. The second chapter seeks to elucidate the current dynamics of the Paraiba cotoniculture, in the Northeastern and Brazilian context. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between the decline of regional bottling and the process of disaggregating the conditions of production from the mass of direct producers. This process, accelerated mainly by the plague of the beetle, is originated by a deeper phenomenon: the expansion of capitalist landlord, concentrator and exclusion. Chapter A shows what the "boll weevil" pest consists of, how it came to be, how it spread through the regional cotoniculture geography, and what the consequences are in the general context. Finally, Chapter 5 summarizes and interprets the results of the field research on the effects of the boll weevil pest in the municipality of. Ingá. In sum, the purpose of this study is to try to: a) reveal the fallacy of the theses that attribute to the boll weevil (or drought) the responsibility for the degradation of the conditions of survival of the semi-arid peasants; b) show, through the analysis of a representative case (that of Ingá), that the crisis of traditional gastronomy is not the result of a biological (or raetereological) fatalism, but rather a logical consequence of concrete socioeconomic structures, , of the government policies, whose benefits are confiscated by the regional oligarchies to show that the specific nature of the crisis of traditional gastronomy is not clearly visible due to the "social" camouflage of the commercial forms which, through lease contracts, the purchase and sale of cotton, inputs and, above all, the programs regional development, of "support to small producers", give the idea of a supposed common interest for the entire Northeast as a whole, eliminating social differences and antagonisms. We believe that our research adds arguments and evidence for the diagnosis of Paraíba agriculture, to demonstrate that the ever deeper split between rural workers and the objective conditions of production of their survival can only be reversed from Agrarian Reform and other measures which guarantee the agricultural worker's access to land and other means of production, marketing and financing .