A Pecuária e o sentido prático dos agricultores familiares na Amazônia: o caso da região de Marabá, Pará

Abstract

Recognizing that family farming has its own status and conceptual dynamics and based on the processing of data from the 1996 and 2006 Agricultural Census and the 2016 Rural Environmental Registry, the thesis shows that between 1985 and 2016, in the Marabá region agrarian there was relative stability in both land concentration and family farming size; and that the main change was that livestock production directly linked to family farming jumped from 18% to 24.39% of the regionally produced value; the gross value of livestock production which represented 37% of the total value of family farming production reached 67% of the value of this segment; the percentage of the number of family farms that developed livestock increased from 31% to 83%; and the area in family farms for cattle ranching more than doubled from 41% to 87% of the area in family farms in the region. Conducting field research, guided by readings of the social-symbolic networks of ties, indicates that these objectified manifestations of the family farming livestock process in the region are neither the result of family farmers' actions based on a calculation of odds and gains, nor actions. With an explicit position of purposes, nor rational calculation of means, cattle raising within family farming is the result of practices that are considered unconscious reflecting products of the habitus adjusted to a set marked by a social game in which these social agents have responded with actions. practices aimed at ensuring the daily living of the family; the reduction of labor hardness and intensity; interaction with inherited physical conditions; access to bank credit; gaining purchasing power and bargaining power; and facilitating market integration