Abstract
The goal of this paper is to provide an update on smallholder farming in Brazil. Instead of using data from the last available Agricultural Census (2006), a database from the Ministry of Agrarian Development for 2014 was used. These data are extracted from a tax form called “Declaração de Aptidão ao Pronaf-DAP” (Declaration of Aptitude to Pronaf) that is mandatory for all farmers in Brazil and is used as a source of information to screen smallholders, also called “family farmers” in Brazil, applying for special subsidized public funds available to those in this category. Therefore, the DAP is a valuable source of information regarding this sector. The results show that family farming in Brazil continues to grow and is concentrated in the Northeastern region. The South and Southeast have the highest yields per hectare, up to seven times more than the Northeast. Most of the land is in the hands of a small group concentrated in the Northeast, while most of the income is in the hands of a small group concentrated in the South. Key words: Family farm, economy, Brazil, agriculture.
Highlights
The world’s agricultural market is expected to continue to grow over the decade as the world population grows at an exponential rate
There is no universal definition for family farming; for example, the Brazilian definition focuses on less affluent farms, while the US definition includes farms of all sizes, from farms with low revenue to those that are multi-million dollar enterprises
These results are similar to the mean age between 31 and 50 found by Kiplimo et al (2015) in a study conducted with 600 family farmers in Kenya
Summary
The world’s agricultural market is expected to continue to grow over the decade as the world population grows at an exponential rate. Brazil is among the world’s ten largest economies and has the fifth-largest surface area, and it plays an important role in agricultural exports in the international market. Farms in Brazil represent more than 80% of production units and were responsible for 38% of the gross value of agricultural production in 2006, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE (2006). It is estimated that there are more than 570 million farms in the world, and more than 500 million of these are owned by families (Lowder et al, 2014). Brazilian law’s main points for defining a family farm are as follows: a farm managed by the owner and his or her family; smaller than four fiscal modules
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