A atuação das cooperativas na agricultura familiar do município de Nepomuceno-MG: integração ao modo de produção capitalista e perda de soberania alimentar

Abstract

In recent decades, the subordination of agriculture to the capitalist mode of production has increased. Family farming has not been absent from this phenomenon, since several strategies, such as the dissemination of rural credit, payment for productivity and dependence on the urban-industrial sector for the acquisition of agricultural inputs, were conceived to absorb farmers and their integration into the market. In the municipality of Nepomuceno, whose primary sector, mainly coffee production, stands out in the economy, a close relationship is established between family farming and capitalism. Thus, the objective of the thesis is to understand the process of incorporation of Nepomuceno’s family agriculture to the capitalist mode of production and its integration into agribusiness, discussing its main characteristics, such as the performance of agricultural cooperatives and the loss of food sovereignty. Thus, a conceptual discussion was necessary, distinguishing between peasant and family farming, in order to highlight the definition of family farming adopted in this research and identify the main characteristics of Nepomuceno’s agricultural production. The bibliographic research, document analysis, fieldwork, semi-structured interviews and cross-sectional visits were the methodological procedures adopted in the study. For the evaluation of coffee production in Nepomuceno, a brief history was built on the dissemination of coffee culture in the southern portion of the state of Minas Gerais and in the municipality of Nepomuceno in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Later, the current situation of coffee growing in Nepomuceno was discussed. The results showed that the majority of local coffee growers sell their production to cooperatives operating in the municipality, which resell the beans harvested by farmers to Brazil and other countries. Thus, the cooperatives, through the services offered to the members, assume the role of agents that promote the insertion of family agriculture in the capitalist mode of production and constitute the expression of agribusiness in Nepomuceno. Food sovereignty in the municipality is threatened, since entrepreneurial agriculture, characterized by the production of commodities, makes producers more dependent on the market and reduces their autonomy, inserting them into fierce capitalist competition and impelling them to use inputs from multinational and transnational corporations that monopolize the agrochemical sector. Furthermore, the wages are paid according to productivity achieved and formal labor contracts are rare. There is a false sense of control over the production process, as despite the formal ownership of farms, many coffee farmers do not have autonomy over decisions about their farms. Farmers whose production is destined only for self-consumption, as well as those who autonomously commercialize the surpluses produced, offer an alternative and constitute resistance in relation to the entrepreneurial agriculture in force in the municipality. The forms and relations of labor and production of the workers of the Nepomuceno municipal fair, who sell their agricultural surpluses directly to consumers, were investigated. However, their permanence is threatened by the increase in the number of Nepomuceno’s agricultural producers, who have had their surplus produce sold to consumers.