Evolução recente da rizicultura nos municípios de Turvo e Meleiro no Estado de Santa Catarina.

Abstract

The transformations occurring in the rhiziculture of the municipalities of Meleiro and Turvo during the 80's are analyzed, with the implementation of PROVARZEAS (National Program for Rational Utilization of Floodplains). Since the colonization process of the two municipalities, the agricultural activity developed was based on family work, in properties that normally had 25 hectares. Among the various agricultural activities in the region, rice cultivation has always stood out as one of the most commercially valuable crops practiced by Italian immigrants and their descendants. In the early 1970s, with the improvement of the transportation system between the southern region of Santa Catarina and the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the farmers of the two municipalities difficulties to market production at the local level. With the public policies adopted for the region's rhiziculture in the early 1980s, these producers increased production through successive increases in productivity, in addition to producing a better quality product. These changes, caused by public policies for agriculture. during the 1980s, the farmers of the two municipalities placed themselves in front of the beneficiary mills as producers of local supply. The oligopolistic structure of the rice trade in the two municipalities led rice producers to sell part of the production to mills in other regions of the state and Paraná, as a way to reduce the relative excess of raw material in the municipality. consequently not allowing the price to be paid to the product at local level. It was highlighted in the study the irrigation and commercialization, involving commodity brokers, as a way of organizing the producers against the capital that controlled the rice production and trading structures.