Análise - diagnóstico de sistema de produção agrícolas: o caso do assentamento lagoa do mineiro - Itarema - Ceará - Brasil

Abstract

The rural settlements of agrarian reform resulted from a process of fight for and conquest of the land and the “stars” of this process were the rural workers with the support from progressivist sectors of society. From 1985, with the implementation of the National Plan of Agrarian Reform - PNRA - the implementation of federal settlements was intensified. That policy of settlements guided the actions of agrarian reform with the following basic guidelines: the partnership among the different government spheres (federal, state and municipal) and the workers” participation in all of the phases of the implementation of the settlements, beginning with the co-management until reaching the self management in the consolidation phase. The ones settled in Ceará decided, by a large majority, to maintain the production unit of the expropriated farms, developing a way of exploitation of land that combined the exploitation of single areas with collective areas. The settlements, as economic-social units, show wide and complex relations within themselves, establishing new production relations, new forms of ownership and use of land and with new production and social investments having been made. The settlements are, therefore, categories which are still being formed and which are different from both larger (capitalist) agricultural companies, as well as from consolidated family production units, needing a better understanding of their economic dynamics. The present research carries out a case study in the settlement of Lagoa do Mineiro, located in the town of Itarema, State of Ceará, through the use of integration methodological instruments. The data used are of primary and secondary nature. The main objective of the research is to perform an analysis- diagnosis of both family and collective agricultural production systems, of the settlement of Lagoa do Mineiro. The specific objectives are to characterize the internal dynamics of operation of the family and collective production systems; to characterize, comparatively, the constituent aspects of the production apparatus (land, work and production means) of the family and collective production systems; to determine the efficiency of the family and collective production systems; and to analyze the capacity of the family and collective production systems to meet the needs of reproduction of the families and of the production apparatus. Through the analysis of the evolution of the production systems, of the ways how the different agricultural and animal productions combine with each other, of the knowledge about the internal coherence of the production systems and of their relations to the physical, social, economic and political factors, we verify that the formation of rural settlements of agrarian reform brings about visible changes in the lives of the rural workers” families. The new social and material conditions brought about changes in the production systems developed by those settled and, as a result, in their economic profits. The economic results found demonstrate that the agricultural income obtained by the producers in the production systems of the settlement of Lagoa do Mineiro surpasses the cost of opportunity of the labor force of the area and the level of single reproduction. These results show themselves as positive, because they mean that the ones settled do not need to leave the settlement to look for other income sources, and also that they guarantee what is necessary for the social reproduction of families. Besides the operation of the production systems and of their economic results, other important aspects could not be addressed, which deserve the attention of other researches, like the public policies of health, education, agricultural credit, technical assistance, the environmental impacts resulting from production actions which have influence on the production systems and their dynamics.