Abstract
In the past 10 years, small-scale farmers have been the target of both environmental and rural development concerns at national, state, and municipal levels in Brazil. At the federal level, public policies aim at enhancing family-based farming systems (agricultura familiar) through increasing their participation in the market and guaranteeing their food security. Simultaneously, environmental policies restrict small-scale farmers from using 100% of their property, since they have to conserve a minimum of forest area—forest reserve—as well as a gallery forest. Some government officials and scholars argue that small-scale farmers are not able to follow such environmental rules and should be forgiven, because of the small size of their properties, which limit their choices in production. The question is, Considering government programs for rural development and environmental conservation, are small-scale farmers who live inside or surrounding protected areas able to increase their participation in the market, produce for their livelihoods, and meet environmental conservation rules? To address this question, decisions and activities of small-scale farmers in the state of São Paulo and the Amazon region will be analyzed.
This chapter was originally presented at the Workshop “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research on Human-Environment Interactions,” Indiana University, Bloomington, February 25–27, 2010. I gratefully acknowledge support from FAPESP for research funds (No. 07/53308-1 and No. 01/11473-0) and from the Federal University of São Carlos for academic support. I owe gratitude to Indiana University on behalf of Emilio Moran and Eduardo Brondízio for providing me with support to conduct some of the data analysis presented in this chapter. I am grateful to IBAMA, on behalf of Ângelo de Lima Francisco and Fabiana Bertoncini, for giving me permission to conduct research at Tapajós Flona and Ipanema Flona, respectively. I thank the fieldwork team who helped collect data in 2008 in the two Ipanema settlements and Rosângela Calado da Costa for helping collect data in both places. Finally, I am deeply thankful to all the small-scale farmers and their families from the Tapajós communities and the Ipanema settlements and all other informants for making the collection of data possible. I assume full responsibility for the content presented in this chapter.
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Futemma, C. (2013). Small-Scale Farmers and the Challenges of Environmental Conservation and Rural Development: Case Studies from the State of São Paulo and the Amazon Region. In: Brondízio, E., Moran, E. (eds) Human-Environment Interactions. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4780-7_11
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