Institutionalization of Family Farm Policy in Brazil

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components that structure the narrative are the actors, the institutions and ideas. Actors ... related to the interactions of outcomes, ideas, actors and institutions.
Institutionalization of Family Farm Policy in Brazil: Ideas, institutions and Actors in Time

Georges Flexor (UFRRJ) Professor, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ); Researcher, Observatory of Public Policies for Agriculture (OPPA/UFRRJ) and INCT/PPED Catia Grisa (UFPel) Professor, Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel); Researcher, Observatory of Public Policies for Agriculture (OPPA/UFRRJ)

INTRODUCTION 2014 will be the International Year of Family Farming. This theme was chosen by the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN), thereby confirming the importance of this social category for the sustainable production of food and recognizing the fundamental role which this form of production and mode of life has played for food security and the eradication of poverty in the world, as well as significantly contributing to the Millennium Development Goals (UN, 2011). International recognition of the role played by family farming in the improvement of economic and social conditions is recent. At present a consensus exists in the development community (World Bank, FAO, UN, IDB, etc.) that family farming is a fundamental element in the provision of basic foodstuffs (beans, rice, milk, meat, etc.), in ensuring food and nutritional security, in the alteration of national and regional economic and social structures, and that it is a central actor in the sustainable maintenance of eco-systems. This international recognition, however, rarely appears in the construction of institutional arrangements and structures which allow differentiated treatment in public policies and in relations with states. In the majority of developing countries what is recurrent is the prioritization of public policies, instruments and institutional frameworks aimed at agricultural enterprises and commercial organizations which are fundamentally orientated towards the large-scale

production of agricultural commodities. In the global scenario Brazil is differentiated by the fact that it has created a wideranging institutional apparatus to stimulate production in the family farming sector, as well as recognizing its identity and specific demands. Since the middle of the 1990s the Brazilian state has formulated and implemented various public policies for family farming, seeking to adapt these policies to the diversity of segments which exist within this social category (Brasil, CONDRAF, 2008). Why did Brazil formulate these policies? How were they implemented? Who were the key actors in these processes? Which ideas were mobilized? What was the influence of these Brazilian political institutions? This article seeks to answer these questions. To do this, first of all, an analytical framework will be drawn up to take into account the simultaneous game of ideas, interests and institutions. After this a narrative of the institutionalization of public policies for family farming in Brazil will be offered. The historical narrative is used as a methodological device to analyze how the interactions of ideas, institutions and actors produce a chain of events that lead to the institutionalization of family farm policy in Brazil. Therefore, the narrative incorporates (quite eclectically) the perspective of rational choice developed by Ostrom, the historical institutionalism and approaches that emphasize the role of ideas in the process of policy formulation. Indeed, the main components that structure the narrative are the actors, the institutions and ideas. Actors are the players of the policy game and can be characterized by their preferences, beliefs and resources. Institutions are the rules of the game. They play a regulatory and constitutive role, structuring constraints, producing incentives and shaping the interactions among the parties. Ideas are at the same time as policy “motors” and “judges” of the policy game. They provide sense, meanings and evaluative anchors. A change in the configuration of these variables can be understood as an alteration of the historical context in which policies are formulated and implemented. Indeed, a focus on configurations generated by the interactions of actors, institutions and ideas allows an understanding of the temporality of public policy. Temporality may result from stochastic shock that can induce an alteration of the preferences and beliefs of the actors, that can force an adjust of the rules of the game and/or change the ideas and

paradigms of public action. Temporality might also reflect an endogenous dynamics related to the interactions of outcomes, ideas, actors and institutions. THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF FAMILY FARM POLICY IN BRAZIL: THE NARRATIVE Two key periods are of particular importance in the narrative of the institutionalization process for family farming public policies in Brazil. The first is the creation of the National Program for the Strengthening of Family Farming (Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultural Familiar - PRONAF) in 1996. This period can be easily analyzed as a ‘critical juncture,’ in other words, a period of significant change which produced a historical legacy (Collier & Collier, 1991; Mahoney, 2002; Capoccia & Kelemen, 2007). The second period corresponds to the years when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) and his teams governed Brazil. In this period ‘the roots’ of Pronaf developed and new programs for family farming were institutionalized. THE CRITICAL JUNCTURE: THE CREATION OF PRONAF The construction of PRONAF can be analyzed as the result of the confluence of certain processes (Schneider, Cazella and Mattei, 2004). First, the return to democracy allowed social movements and rural trade unions new forms of political action, while the latter mobilized to place the construction of a differentiated agricultural policy on the public agenda. In others words: ‘Institutions matters" in that many factors which influence the position and power of actors derive from the institutional structure which shape policy interactions, coordinates individual and collective actions and transmits fundamental information for decision making problems Ostrom (2005)1. According to Sallum Jr. (2003), beginning in the second half of the 1980s two processes altered the Brazilian state and the national economic and social order: political redemocratization and economic liberalization. The redemocratization process 1

She sees interaction patterns as being based on rules which actors use to give order to their relations. In the neo-institutionalist perspective which she advocates, rules are understood as the means to prescribe, proscribe, or permit certain behavior. Rules thus perform a series of functions: 1) they create positions; 2) they institute how participants acquire or leave their positions; 3) they establish a range of required, permitted or prohibited actions; 4) they list the required, permitted or prohibited results. These functions represent the key to understanding the incentives and restrictions which structure the patterns of interaction which characterize the interdependence of a policy.

in Brazil from the middle of the 1980s onwards allowed an “intense movement of rearticulation and the flourishing of new civil society organizations” (Santos, 2011, p.79). In this period the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura - CONTAG) altered its political position towards the Brazilian government, becoming more combative and making greater demands; CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores – the Single Trade Union Congress) was created in 1983, while in 1988 the National Department of Rural Workers (DNTR Departamento Nacional de Trabalhadores Rurais) was created within CUT in 1988; the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) emerged in 1984; in 1985 the National Council of Rubber Tappers (Conselho Nacional dos Seringueiros - CNS) was created; in 1991 the Movement of Victims of Dams (Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens - MAB) became official, having been acting since the end of the 1970s. Although with different objectives and emphases, the actions of these groups of actors made the demands of ‘small producers’ even more visible. It is worth stressing that the situation of these ‘small farmers’ deteriorated considerably following the commercial opening started by President Collor, the creation of Mercosul and the deregulation of markets, which implied a reduction in the volume of investments in agricultural policies, the termination of the policy of forming regulating stocks, and the reduction of import tariffs on foodstuffs and cotton. For farmers these various initiatives with a liberal nature very quickly created an economic market marked by intense competition and the feeling of abandonment by the public authorities. Moreover, with the ‘dismantling’ of the agricultural policy instruments created in previous decades to stimulate the modernization of agriculture (Santos, 2011; Sallum Jr., 2003), farmers, especially small farmers in the south who competed directly with agricultural imports from other Mercosul countries, experienced a significant reduction of their family reproduction capacities. With the reproduction conditions of a growing amount of their members threatened, but now enjoying a more open political scenario, rural trade unionism began to adopt more purposeful strategies, in contrast to the critical and demand-based posture that had been prevalent until then (Picolotto, 2011; Schneider, 2010; Favareto, 2006). Within the new democratic rules the actions of rural trade unions achieved some impacts which deserve to be noted. Some of these demands were incorporated and

institutionalized during the drafting of the 1991 Agricultural Act, which recognized the diversity of Brazilian farmers and allowed for the construction of a differentiated agricultural policy for the small producers. The law also created the National Council for Agricultural Policy, guaranteeing the participation of two representatives from CONTAG in it. According to Mahoney (2001), these elements opened opportunities for a ‘critical juncture,’ later identified in the institutionalization of PRONAF. From the north to the south of Brazil the rural world was agitated. Regionalized mobilizations were carried out under the name of CUT. In 1991 in Pará, the Federation of Agricultural Workers of Pará (Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura do Pará - FETAGRI) and other rural organizations and movements held the I Grito do Campo (Scream of the Countryside), a demonstration against violence in rural regions, as well as demanding the democratization and de-bureaucratization of the Constitutional Fund for Financing of the North (Fundo Constitucional de Financiamento do Norte - FNO) (Tura, 2000). Some months later, as Banco da Amazônia (BASA) had not responded to FETAGRI demands, the II Grito do Campo was held, which resulted in the creation of FNO-Urgente aimed at micro and small producers, whether or not they had title to their lands (Tura, 2000). In 1992 the III Grito do Campo was held with the participation of representatives from other states in the North, which allowed the extension of FNOUrgente to the entire region. Meanwhile in the southern region of Brazil the Jornadas de Luta (Days of Struggle) were held, mobilizations that were also organized by rural organizations linked to CUT. These sought to meet the demands of small producers who were facing difficulties arising out of the above mentioned political, social, and economic context. Based on these regionalized initiatives there emerged a DNTR/CUT proposal to unify them and turn them into a national mobilization, held in partnership with other rural social movements. This was the Gritos da Terra Brasil (Scream of the Land - Brazil). The I Grito da Terra Brasil was held in May 1994, organized by DNTR/CUT, CONTAG, MST, MAB, CNS, Movimento Nacional de Pescadores (MONAPE –National Fishermen’s Movement) and Coordenação das articulações dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (CAPOIB - Coordination of Indigenous Peoples’ Groups of Brazil). I Grito da Terra Brasil culminated in the creation of the Program for the Valorization of Small-Scale Rural Production (Programa de Valorização da Pequena Produção Rural - PROVAPE, 1994). This juncture can be interpreted as a pre-public policy phase, as Hall (1993) labels it, in other words a period when identification is

occurring and when the issue is becoming part of the governmental agenda. The mobilization did not stop and in June 1995 CONTAG, CUT, MST, MAB, CNS, MONAPE, CAPOIB and the Rural Women´s Workers Organizations joined together in the II Grito da Terra Brasil. Largely as a result of this PRONAF was established by CMN Resolution no. 2.191, dated 24 August 1995, replacing PROVAPE (Brasil, CMN, 1995). PRONAF would become the principal policy for family farming. At the same time a change also occurred within Brazilian academia at the beginning of the 1990s.

Most important for explaining the creation of Pronaf is the

reinterpretation of the role of small farmers and their resistance and innovation capacities (Wanderley, 2009; Schneider, 2003; 1994). These ideas were important to shape the political context. As Sabatier and Jenkins (1993) stress, the way actors perceive a given social problem and the instruments they believe necessary to resolve it depend on shared normative belief systems and mental representations. Three works are recurrently highlighted for their contributions to this paradigmatic change2: Veiga (1991), Abramovay (1992) and Lamarche (1999; 1993). According to Schneider (2003, p.29), “the greatest merit of these studies has perhaps been the fact that they showed that family farming is a social form that is recognized and legitimated in the majority of developed countries, in which the agrarian structure is mostly composed of exploitation in which family labor assumes decisive importance.” Similarly, Wanderley (2009) observes, alluding especially to research coordinated by Lamarche (1993; 1999), that these studies repositioned the axis of reflection, now no longer centered on the reasons for the survival of the peasantry, since this has become uncontestable, but on the place of family farming in ‘modern’ societies. Furthermore, another two groups of works contributed to the recognition and affirmation of the concept of family farming in Brazil. The importance of these two studies is less conceptual. However, they granted widespread recognition to the role played by family farmers and legitimized the formulation of policies for this agricultural 2

Hall (1989) argue that theories operate as paradigms. They provide a vision of how society and the economy function, a set of hypotheses about the relationship between the instruments chosen and the expected results, and a general framework to organize relations between public and private powers. In other words, from the perspective of the public policy paradigm proposed by Hall, theories function not just as a mode of analysis for the political and economic world, but also as a guide for public action. Political confrontations are seen as struggles over ideas and not conflicts of interests. Change occurs when a set of ideas loses its legitimacy due to the exhaustion of the policies it reflects.

segment. These were the World Bank reports Brazil, the management of agriculture, rural development and natural resources (World Bank, 1994a; 1994b) and the works coordinated by Carlos Henrique Guanziroli (FAO/INCRA, 1994) resulting from a technical cooperation agreement between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Instituto de Colonização e Reforma Agrária - INCRA). The World Bank reports recognized the importance and predominance of “small and mid-sized land holdings” in the countries with the highest indices of total productivity and highlighted, specifically for the Brazilian case, the relevance of small farmers in the creation of employment, and the production of food and agro-industrial products (Banco Mundial, 1994b). They also diagnosed that until then small farmers and Brazilian rural workers had been penalized by the existing agricultural policy and legislation and stated that “eliminating these prejudices against small producers and rural workers can be the key for vigorous rural development.” (World Bank, 1994b, p.37). In turn, the central contributions of the FAO/INCRA report (1994) were: a) defining family farming with greater conceptual clarity, since it was distinguished from ‘business farming’ by the characteristics of its form of social (re)production (and not by its size); b) classifying family farming as consolidated, in transition, and peripheral, arguing that the focus of government policies has to be the intermediate category with the aim of consolidating it, while specific agrarian and social policies needed to be prepared for the peripheral sector; c) proposing a new rural development strategy for Brazil based on family farming, which would include actions aimed at the construction of a differentiated agricultural policy, support for integrated global development of family establishments, education and training and/or rural technical assistance, the stimulation of sustainability practices, land-holding, and agro-industrial policy for family based production. It should be noted that these studies of family farming at the beginning of the 1990s, in addition to the important repercussions they caused among those studying the rural world and in the academic debate, helped family farming organizations to gain greater political visibility and assisted the drafting of differentiated public policies, specifically PRONAF (Buainain and Fonseca, 2012; Schneider, 2010; Guanziroli and Basco, 2009; Schneider, Cazella and Mattei, 2004). Drawing on rural studies and dialogues with rural

trade unionism, the state institutionalized a definition of family farming in the resolution which created PRONAF, created specific policies for this social category and, later, edited the Family Farming Law (Law no. 11.326, dated 24 July 2006). Moreover, the analysis must take into account the choices of the executive, the actor with the greatest decision making powers in policy formulation processes in Brazil. The Brazilian institutions provide the Executive with the important power to formulate policy. The president bears, for example, rights to vetoes which grant him important power to control the political agenda. He also bears legislative power using medidas provisórias (MPs) [provisory measures] and the rights to control the budget and public administration (Mueller and Pereira 2000). Indeed, in addition to the visibility and the political recognition achieved by rural trade unionism and social movements, and the paradigmatic change reported in rural studies, another contribution to the emergence of PRONAF came from the preferences which guided the actions of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) government. At least three factors seem to have come together for public administrations to ‘agree’ on the construction of PRONAF in the FHC administration. One is the fact that some rural trade unionists were active members of the national executive of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira - PSDB), the hegemonic party in government at that time. Another factor which seems to have contributed is the interest of the FHC administration in maintaining some influence on rural trade unionism, considering what this represented in terms of political and electoral support and the control of violence in the countryside. It also should be highlighted that the country was experiencing a context of intense mobilizations arising out of the Gritos da Terra Brasil and the struggles of MST which were in a time of ascension. The creation of PRONAF was a type of ‘political exchange’ between rural trade unionism and the government, and also a form of attenuating the mobilizations of MST. As Medeiros (2001) noted, granting distributional policies became strategic for the government, which aimed to reduce and contain social conflict and, at the same time, maintain some influence over rural trade unionism and guarantee their electoral support. Finally, it should be highlighted that the ideas of some scholars of the rural world, especially those supported by the World Bank (1994a; 1994b) and the FAO/INCRA

Project (1994), influenced the preferences of public administrators. As has already been mentioned, these studies highlighted the economic importance of family farming and the need for the state to intervene in ‘market failures’ and in policies for reducing rural poverty. A reorientation in general agricultural policy was recommended, no longer based on subsidies and income sustenance, but rather on the promotion of an environment which favors the access of family farmers to markets. Thus, the ideas and interests of public administrators, added to expressive social mobilization and political pressure by trade unionism and other rural organizations at the beginning of the 1990s, allowed the emergence of PRONAF, whose institutionalities are presented below. The construction of this program can be identified as a ‘critical juncture,’ after which there opened possibilities for creating other public policies suitable to the particularities of family farmers, and both (family farming and differentiated policies) gained greater recognition and political and institutional legitimacy (Santos, 2011; Mahoney, 2001).3 As summarized by Santos (2011, p. 120), this critical juncture resulted from the convergence and the sequence of the set of flows, both internal and external to sector policies, that had been ongoing since 1980. After the shaping of this critical juncture, the effects of institutional feedback reinforced the affirmation of PRONAF and the need to expand differentiated public policies and to institutionally strengthen the category of family farming (Pierson, 2003; Thelen, 1999). Presidential decree no. 1946 which established PRONAF on 28 July 1996 is a landmark in the history of agricultural policies in Brazil. Although various authors (Abramovay & Veiga, 1999; Santos, 2011) highlight that in function of the pressure exercised by the National Confederation of Agriculture (Confederação Nacional da Agricultura - CNA) – an organization which represents the interests of business agriculture – the final text allowed the most capitalized family farmers access to PRONAF, the historical importance of Pronaf in the construction of differentiated public policies cannot be doubted. Over the years the program expanded in terms of numbers of users and the amount of resources, and sought to contemplate the diversity of segments and activities present in family farming. Based on the original institutional model various adaptations were created with specific purposes: the specially costed PRONAF (‘Pronafinho’) aimed at less capitalized farmers (1997); Agro-industry 3

Which does not signify the non-existence of policy and institutional conflict or resistance, principally on the part of agricultural business organizations, as discussed in detail by Santos (2011).

PRONAF (1998); Forestry PRONAF (2002); Food PRONAF (2003); Agro-Ecology PRONAF (2003); Rural Tourism PRONAF (2003); PRONAF Woman (2003); Rural Youth PRONAF (2003); Semi-Arid PRONAF (2003); Machinery and Equipment PRONAF (2003); Eco-PRONAF (2007); More Food (2008) and Sustainable PRONAF (2009). BEYOND PRONAF: THE TRAJECTORY OF FAMILY FARMING POLICIES IN THE ‘LULA ERA’ As we will see below, the election of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva as president in 2002, opened a ‘window of opportunity’ allowing new ideas and demands to take advantage of the institutional structure developed under Pronaf to diversify the range of actions related to family farming. Due to the growing returns from the creation of PRONAF and other actions aimed at family farming, once the political price of institutionalization is assumed, the costs of new formulations and public policies were considerably reduced. Indeed, the creation of PRONAF opened opportunities for the construction of other differentiated rural development policies and when a political discontinuity occurred family farm policies operated a gradual institutional change (Steeck & Thelen, 2005). Some of these changes are specifically related to family farming production, as in the case of Family Farming Insurance, while others include this social segment in a broader objective, such as the reduction of poverty, food security, or territorial development. Family Farming Insurance (Seguro de Agricultura Familiar - SEAF), also called the Program to Guarantee Further Agricultural Activity (Programa de Garantia da Atividade Agropecuária Mais - PROAGRO Mais), was created in 2004, with the aim of assuring the production of family farm units in the event of climatic events and/or diseases or plagues without a method of prevention and control, and to guarantee part of the income predicted from the productive activity. Resulting from institutional adjustments to the ‘traditional’ PROAGRO program, created in 1973, in order to adapt it to the norms and rules to the particularities of family farming, this Program along with the Harvest Guarantee Program (Programa Garantia Safra), created in 2002, and the Price Guarantee Program for Family Farming (Programa de Garantia de Preços da Agricultura Familiar - PGPAF), institutionalized in 2006, respectively responsible for protecting family production against climatic difficulties and the devaluation of the prices of the products financed. It should be noted that SEAF was created “to deal with

the small producers linked to PRONAF” (Brasil, CMN, 2004b), in other words, it deals exclusively with the family farmers covered by PRONAF who used this Program during the respective agricultural year. Following, to a certain extent, the pre-1991 institutionality of PROAGRO, the family farmers who for whatever reason, including lack of need, did not use this rural credit policy found themselves prevented from differentiated rural insurance. As soon as the Lula government started, it launched the Zero Hunger Program4 and recreated the National Food Security Council (CONSEAs) as an advisory body to recommend the President. The CONSEAs was reinstated in January 2003 and immediately began discussing guidelines for actions in the areas of food, nutrition and family farm. One of the first documents published by the CONSEAs was the "Guidelines for Food Security and Agricultural Development for the Harvest Plan 2003/2004" (Technical Grants CONSEAs), which emphasized the need to articulate the consumer subsidy and the support to family farm. This paper supported the establishment of the Family Farming Food Acquisition Program (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos da Agricultural Familiar - PAA) still in 2003 (Delgado, 2013; Delgado and Conceição Oliveira, 2005; Schmitt, 2005). The PAA involves the purchasing by public authorities of foodstuffs from family farmers and the distribution of this to people in situations of social vulnerability, to welfare institutions, public or philanthropic schools, or to build up public food stocks. It is important to note that the initial institutionalization of PAA was circumscribed by Article 19 of Law no. 10.696, which dealt with the rescheduling and renegotiation of debts arising out of rural credit. According to Paganini (2010), the Extraordinary Ministry for Food Security and Combating Hunger, created in January 2003, had formulated a bill containing the description and the normatization of the basic elements of a federal program. However, due to the difficulties which the government was facing in approving Provisional Measures (Medidas Provisórias - MP) without the addition of many amendments, and also considering the long length of time for an MP to pass through Congress (which could compromise the budgetary implementation of the 4

Zero Hunger Program (Programa Fome Zero), which focused on the poorest and starving populations and which was one of the priority policies of the president at that time. Fome Zero’s initial premise was that food was a human right and that this was not being achieved due to insufficiency of demand, the incompatibility of food prices with the purchasing power of the majority of the population, and the exclusion of the poor from the market. Fome Zero included the idea (later institutionalized in PAA) of articulating support for family farming by institutional purchases.

resources already allotted for the fiscal year), the government strategically chose to take advantage of another MP and inserted an article creating the PAA. PAA has a direct relationship with PRONAF. First, Article 19 of Law no. 10.696/2003 specifies that the Program is aimed at the acquisition of agricultural products produced by family farmers included in PRONAF, including the categories of those who received land as part of agrarian reform, landless rural workers, those in informal settlements, quilombolas (people living in communities originally created by fugitive slaves), extractive agricultural laborers, families affected by the building of dams, indigenous communities, and family producers in special conditions (Brasil, Presidência da República, 2003a). In other words, the beneficiaries of PAA are restricted to those identified as family farmers, by the PRONAF Declaration of Suitability (Declaração de Aptidão ao PRONAF - DAP). Second, one of the modalities present at the beginning of the Program –Family Farming Early Purchase – was extinguished in 2004 in the midst of arguments alleging its similarity with rural credit and the resultant defaulting. Unexpected results and the effects of ‘institutional feedback’ (Fouilleux, 2011; Pierson, 2003) led to certain actors, specifically certain public administrators, to re-evaluate their views of this modality and they began to demand that it be ended as a defensive strategy to maintain its political legitimacy. Occurring at the beginning of PAA, this is one of the principal and most controversial institutional changes which occurred in the program. The question of food security and its relationship with PRONAF also permeates the National School Food Program (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar - PNAE). Unlike the other policies cited, PNAE was not formulated with the specific purpose of assisting family farming. Rather, its roots were in the School Meals Campaigns which commenced in 1955 and was institutionalized as a public policy in 1979, a period when ‘family farmers’ had not yet been recognized as having rights (Medeiros, 2010). However, based on Law no. 11.947, dated 16 June 2009, the Brazilian government expanded school meals to second level education and to literacy classes for young people and adults, as well as establishing an “institutional connection between the food offered in public schools and local or regional family farming, mediated by the valorization of the diversity of alimentary habits.” (Maluf, 2009, p.1). after this date at least 30% of the funds provided by the National Development Fund in Education

(Fundo Nacional de Desenvolvimento da Educação - FNDE) “had to be used in the acquisition of foodstuffs directly from family farming and rural family businesses, with agrarian reform settlements, traditional indigenous communities and quilombola communities receiving priority.” (Brasil, Presidência da República, 2009a). To participate in this institutional market, family farmers had to be organized into formal or informal groups5 and had to hold either an individual and/or judicial DAP which consists of a resource which assures exclusivity for the participation of family farming in public policies, but which at the same time limits the insertion of a set of family farmers who cannot meet the demanded institutional requirements. The emergence of the territorial question as the axis to promote rural development resulted from the confluence of three processes which occurred at the beginning of the 2000s. First, the academic debates gained strength from the publication of works by Ricardo Abramovay and José Eli da Veiga. These two authors were considered the pioneering authors in the discussion of development from a territorial perspective in Brazil. The basic idea they both defended was that rural development should incorporate interaction between the countryside and the city and the valorization of the spatial dimension of the economy and the local resources of a territory (Abramovay, 2003a; 1998; Veiga, 2002a; 2002b; 2001; Veiga et al., 2001). It should also be emphasized that these authors also had close relationships with social movements and rural trade unions, with one of them being in 2001-2 the executive secretary of National Council for Sustainable Rural Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Rural Sustentável - CNDRS), an institution created to propose guidelines for the formulation and implementation of public policies. Second, studies of the area proliferated – many of which were stimulated by the government’s initiative of creating a territorial public policy – which instrumentalized the actions of administrators, contributing to the evaluations and improvements which occurred to the policy over the years (Favareto, 2010). Finally, the emergence of the territorial theme also resulted from a negative evaluation of the mechanisms of local governance established in PRONAF5

For informal family agriculture groups to be able to take part in public competitions, they have to be presented to the Executing Entity by a Facilitator Entity, which will also help to prepare the Sales Project. Facilitator Entities are the representative organizations of family farming (registered in the Brazilian System for Technical Assistance and Rural Training), rural trade unions and workers from the family farming sectors, and organizations accredited by the MDA to issue DAPs. Formal groups had to present a Judicial DAP, which was granted to organizations formed by at least 70% of family farmers with an individual DAP.

Infrastructure. As a result of these three processes in 2003 PRONAF Infrastructure was reformulated, and the Program for the Support of Sustainable Development in Rural Territories (Programa de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Sustentável de Territorio Rurais PRONAT) was created in its place, under the responsibility of the Secretariat for Territorial Development. CONCLUSION Analyzing the construction of public policies for family farming in Brazil, it can be observed initially that changes in the polity dimension and in the institutionalities of the Brazilian political system – triggered by the democratic reopening in the second half of the 1980s, and also including the promulgation of the Brazilian constitution (1988) and the definition of agricultural and agrarian laws at the beginning of the 1990s – were fundamental for permitting and encouraging the participation of social actors in the construction of public policies who, until then, had been marginal in public arenas and who had found difficulties in intervening in them. These spaces were vital for giving visibility, for example, to ‘small farmers’ who increasingly sought to construct social mobilizations and demanded differentiated public policies for rural development which could meet their specific needs. An emblematic juncture in this regard was the creation of PRONAF in 1995. PRONAF marked the political and institutional recognition by the Brazilian state of small farmers, now called family farmers. From regional programs which barely acknowledged – if at all - the economic importance of their social category, family famers were now covered for the first time by a policy at the national level aimed exclusively at them, which had been constructed through dialogue and negotiations of ideas and interests between rural trade unions and public administrators, in confluence with the affirmations of scholars of the Brazilian rural world and multilateral international organizations. Through the policy affirmations, the effects of institutional feedback and the growing legitimacy that the program and the social category were acquiring, possibilities were opened for the creation of new instruments and new differentiated public policies for rural development. It is also important to highlight another political change in 2002 which contributed to this scenario: the election of Lula as President of Brazil. As reported in this paper, with

the exception of the creation of PRONAF, all the other policies analyzed had as an important trigger for their emergence (or alteration in the case of PNAE) the change of president in 2002. The election of Lula opened an opportunity for the participation of new actors (policy makers and segments from civil society) in Brazilian public administration and as a result for new ideas and interests in the construction of public policies, which adapted, took advantage of, or created new institutions to promote rural development and family farming. Among the new actors and ideas, and present most especially in the cases of PAA and PNAE, the most notable were those operating in the areas of food and nutritional security and agro-ecology, which arose out of different social organizations (NGO’s, universities, networks of civil society organizations, amongst others), but which had similar ideas about the role of the state in society, models of sustainable development and suitable public policies for this purpose, mediated by family farming, SAN and agro-ecology.

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