PRONAF's funding of tillages in the brasilian northeast: behavior of financed products during the years 2013-2021

Abstract

Family farming has been gaining a new look since the 1990s. A look that has sought to characterize it in a positive way, that is, to characterize it for what it is; and no longer defining it in a negative way, that is, for what it is not, as if it were the destiny of family farming to become a large monoculture production. Thus, family farming became associated, among other factors, with food production; it have been receiveing its own rural credit policy, formalized in Pronaf. However, there have been serious questions about Pronaf's ability to meet the regional diversity of family farming and, above all, about the concentration of its resources in crops that reproduce the model of productive specialization associated with crops for export. In this sense, our article seeks to observe whether, in the case of the Northeast region, Pronaf has managed to finance crops linked to local food generally associated with diversified production. To do so, we analyzed data on agricultural funding for crops granted through Pronaf during the period from 2013 to 2021 for the Northeast region. We conclude that, although there is a diversity of crops financed by Pronaf in the Northeast, the growing share of corn cultivation in the total resources requires attention.