A sustentabilidade de unidades de produção familiares nos assentamentos de reforma agrária do sertão pernambucano

Abstract

At present, land reform settlements in the State of Pernambuco are based on subsistence agriculture and are not much sustainable. The main goal of this study was to investigate the sustainability of the peasant families of Semi-arid region of Pernambuco by means of economic, social and environmental indicators. The chosen study area was the municipality of Serra Talhada and two different and complementary approaches have been used. The first consisted of a simplified Rapid Rural Appraisal and the second focused on quantitative aspects regarding expenses and revenues of the families. For the modeling, the model originally developed by Patnaik (1976) and afterwards applied in the case of exploration of agriculture labor in the Northeast by Ferreira Irmão (1984) has been chosen. In sequence, the model developed by Fernandes (1997) has been used to estimate the families’ sustainability. Results show that these settler families were mainly classified as medium peasants (52,03%) which is a good indicator of their sustainability level. However, the aggregated result valued 0.33 that represents low sustainability and most of the families were classified in low and medium sustainability. These results indicate the necessity of policies that promote sustainability of smallholders in settlement areas and that focus especially on their sustainable development.