As múltiplas funções da agricultura familiar camponesa: práticas socioculturais e ambientais de convivência com o semiárido.

Abstract

The multifunctionality of agriculture is based on the comprehension that it, besides producing foods and fibers, plays other functions of fundamental importance in the dynamic of agricultural development. This understanding enlarges the socioeconomic functions field attributed to agriculture, not being understood only as an agricultural goods producer. So, assuming that the productive and socio-cultural dynamics are result of agriculture social relations, marked by numerous representations related to “coping” with the semi-aridness, it was used as an analytical tool the concept of multifunctionality, to demonstrate sociological importance of the multiple functions of peasant family agriculture in the context of semi-arid. In this way, it was allowed to analyze the different functions and activities done by the peasant families, while intrinsic characteristics and the ones necessary to the familiar establishments, and while essentially different functions from productive economic functions, through the interaction between families and environment in its proper dynamics of social reproduction, considering the diverse “ways of life” of the families in its integrity. Methodologically, the research was centered in peasant families, using semi-structuralized questionnaires, applied in a sample of eight “small farms” in four cities from Curimataú Ocidental – Agreste Paraibano and in its territories, based on secondary information and on interviews with „local social actors‟, in order to point that that diversity of activities is producer‟ of positive externalities of environment sustainability. The results ratify previous researches that agriculture loses the exclusiveness of its productive and economic character, assuming each time more the character of a space of life „producer‟ of externalities and public goods. They also confirm the hypothesis that the demonstration of multiple functions of agriculture will be able to point guide lines to agricultural politics, since the studied conditions are specified. Moreover, given the practical coexistence “coping” with semiaridness (underground barrages, tanks of stone, watering holes of plates, etc.), they partially confirm the second hypothesis, that multiple functions contemplate, even the quality of life, actions of Sustainable Territorial Development, due to the persistent disarticulation in the actions of the local public managers together with the farmers; Neither these farmers visualize the multiple roles that fulfill or are able to fulfill, while „actors” of this distinct and diversified agriculture. However, there are elements that point in the direction of a role of social cohesion, that agriculture and/or activities linked to it can propitiate, as the example of pluriactivity, of farming production (maize, beans and goats) towards the auto consumption and of public politics of PRONAF, this last converging in the construction of a collective process of organization of farmers.