Abstract
This article analyzes the conservative narratives underlying current changes in Brazilian rural development public policies. It first presents an overview of the recognition and institutionalization of family farming and the main policies created in support of this segment. Subsequently, it discusses how a conservative narrative started to question the ability of these policies to integrate family farmers into modern agricultural markets. Focusing on how this narrative tries to legitimate a new “referential” for public action, the article analyzes the discourse on newly occurring segregation between agricultural policies for productive farmers and social policies for unproductive ones. It demonstrates how this discourse excludes family farmers from the social pact that prevailed over the past three decades and depended on the state as an actor to mediate the contradictions in the unstable coexistence of agribusiness and family-farming logics. Finally, it analyzes how rural social movements are reacting to this process.
Highlights
Este artigo analisa as narrativas conservadoras que sustentam as atuais mudanças nas políticas públicas de desenvolvimento rural no Brasil
At the end of President Lula da Silva’s (2007–2010) second term, and especially during President Dilma Rousseff’s first term (2011–2014), debates intensified over the limits and future of family-farming policies, and even over the fate of the Ministry of Agrarian Development
The conservative narrative tried to build a story about the ineffectiveness of rural development policies, suggesting that the economic strength of Brazilian agriculture was confined to a small segment of highly productive modern farmers provided with technology, which, though including some family farms, would be better supported by sectoral agricultural policies through the Ministry of Agriculture (Alves and Rocha 2010)
Summary
Since the colonial period in Brazil, the state and economic elites have relegated family farming to a position subservient to the interests of the exporting plantation. Another narrative mainly supported by MDA officials, though by researchers and rural labor unions (CONTAG and FETRAF), emphasized the need to review existing policies and especially improving coordination between programs that seemed to have contradictory rural development strategies (i.e., social policies to alleviate rural poverty, which was partly produced by indebtedness resulting from credit policies) This narrative sought to strengthen the idea that a new generation of policies should be designed to include improvements in infrastructure for agricultural production, processing, and transportation and technical assistance to promote new economic alternatives. Both ideas presume a “discursive selectivity that imposes a hierarchy on who is able or not to be productively integrated” (Bruno 2016, 1)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
