Certificação orgânica pelo sistema participativo de garantia do MST no assentamento Bernardo Marin II em Russas-CE

Abstract

The Participatory Guarantee System (SPG), as one of the mechanisms for assessing organic conformity, aims to promote more democratic access to these foods for those who would not be able to afford an audit-based certification process, such as the case of the Bernardo Marin II Settlement by the MST in Russas, Ceará. This settlement recently established a certification group following this model. The present study analyzes whether this certification has brought economic and social benefits to the daily lives of these family farmers, also seeking to describe the process and history of certification within the Settlement, in addition to outlining the profile of the people involved in the system and listing the products they produce through a qualitative analysis of the criteria, using a non-probability sampling approach and applying a semi-structured questionnaire. It then emerged, based on the interviews and the history of the system in the settlement, that: part of the farmers received the first certification on August 12, 2022 and the second in June 2023, they were 10 interviewees who made up 8 family units with 40% shared management by the couple, being part of the “Vitória da Luta” production group of the COOPALC agroindustry management group, having an equally distributed division between men and women with an average age range of 56.3 years and education up to elementary school II for the majority, experiencing difficulties in adapting the system's requirements for these reasons, they also have average incomes of up to two minimum wages, in addition, they reported that they were able to learn about organic certification from this group,but they still have many challenges, including with the cooperative, related to the marketing and production of cashew, cassava and acerola. Even so, evaluating the system in question between neutral and satisfied, there were no relevant differences before the process, concluding that the SPG is not yet bringing major changes to the lives of this focus group, but by improving the education of these people and increasing financial and technical subsidies, future research can collect positive data in this regard.