Se a gente se unir a gente vai conseguir": cooperação, gestão das agroindústrias e os desafios da condição camponesa no MST-CE

Abstract

Rural peoples, in their struggles for reproduction as peasants, have been conditioned by not having land ownership, leaving them to negotiate their labor force in a precarious manner in the service of the production of raw materials for agricultural farms and, currently, for large agri-food corporations. In this sense, the struggle to guarantee the processing of the production of settlers in the agro-industrial segment is a challenge in agrarian reform and is configured as an act of organization and peasant resistance, understanding that this is a dynamism never experienced by peasants in the MST of the State of Ceará. The thesis is defended that the forms of agricultural cooperation in agrarian reform are survival strategies in the face of capital, and that they allow access to investments in accessible technologies for peasants in their territories, guaranteeing them better living conditions in the countryside. The theoretical basis is based on the understanding of the Brazilian agrarian reality and the challenges of cooperation in the peasantry (Oliveira, 2005; Fernandes, 2008; Chayanov, 2017, among others). Shared management, based on the creation of regional agro-industrial cooperatives, with a focus on the management of peasant agro-industries in MST-CE settlements, has contributed to the understanding of the challenges imposed on the peasant condition in the act of cooperating based on the Management Model for Social Enterprises. The research project emerged from the demand of the Production, Cooperation and Environment Sector (SPCMA), and its general objective is to analyze the challenges of cooperation in the MST-CE with a focus on the management of peasant agroindustries. The methodology was based on the militant/researcher praxis, committed to the agrarian reform settlements in Ceará in their cooperative and agroindustrial processes, using research procedures associated with action research with a focus on semi-structured interviews, discussion groups, field visits, among other paths, and supported by the method of dialectical historical materialism. The thesis highlights the concept of peasant agroindustries, understanding it as an achievement of the MST-CE in advancing the agroindustrialization of its products with a focus on agroecological production, strengthening cooperativism through a management model that ensures production, participation and income generation for families settled under agrarian reform