Institutional markets in Seridó: potentialities and limitations for the insertion of family agriculture.
Institutional markets. Institutional arrangements. Family agriculture. Programa do Leite Potiguar. PAA-Leite.
Family farming is a social group that, although a product of the process of occupation of rural areas since colonization, came to be formalized only in 1996, through Decree No. 1946 of June 28, 1996, after a long period of pressure for changes. From the reordering of the studies on the theme and its formalization, family agriculture became the target of several public policies. However, despite settled it’s positioning, market access has always been a major obstacle to the development of this group, since it was excluded and did not benefit from the modernization of the Brazilian countryside. The market, institution that has several virtues, due to its functioning mechanisms and its product selection criteria, ends up excluding these small farmers precisely because they do not fit these criteria. In Brazil, the adoption of regulated markets (institutional markets) for family farming proved to be efficient for the insertion of these groups in the market, opening up new possibilities for reproduction in rural life. These markets follow the interaction logic of redistribution and centrality described by Polanyi (2000), offering a viable alternative for the insertion of marginalized social groups in the market circuits. It is from these perspectives that this work seeks to analyze which the limitations for the insertion and continuity of the family farmers in the Programa do Leite Potiguar (PLP) and the PAA-Leite, since both programs are subject to dispute by sectors of society. For this, we analyze the institutional arrangements of both programs, observing their unfolding over time and how they influenced the insertion of family agriculture. In addition, we also analyze the limitations faced by family farmers themselves, through the collection of primary data and a characterization built on secondary data. After the research execution, the results show that the limitations are diverse, with the geographical dispersion and the limitations of the productive nature being the most latent by the producers' side. With regard to the institutional arrangements adopted by the programs, it is worth noting that the model adopted by the PLP, ended up placing the market as an allocation of criteria for producers selection. This fact ended up influencing both the PAA-Leite activities, as also limiting the insertion of farmers in both programs, since for the dairy industries, dependent on the PLP to function, it is essential that the program is not paralyzed. In establishing selection criteria that small producers cannot meet, dairy companies seek to mitigate the costs inherent in the insertion of family farmers in the programs, since the category needs a differentiated institutional arrangement to be included in the programs.