Do fumo à fábrica: transformações no espaço agrário e suas implicações na agricultura familiar de Santo Estevão-BA

Abstract

The agrarian space in Brazil can be understood through the contradictions, conflicts and all the diversity of productions that are fundamental to understand the new dynamics present in the field. The space for Milton Santos (2012) is an unequal accumulation of times and can be understood by the categories of form, function, structure and process, which, when articulated, can analyze the totality. We used the same categories used by Santos (2012) to understand the transformations that the agrarian space in Brazil has been presenting, using as a cutout the reality observed in the county of Santo Estevão in Bahia. Thus, the objective of the research was to analyze the socio-spatial and economic transformations in the agrarian space of Santo Estevão-BA from Family Agriculture between 1990 to 2021. The analyses were inserted in the contradictions between the land structure and the Family Agriculture of the municipality studied, since the land, income and agricultural production reflect in the survival/permanence strategies of the subjects of the Santo Estevão field. The installation of the shoe factory also constituted an action in the space that changed the forms of work in some communities and the logic of remaining in the field, since it absorbed a portion of the rural workforce, on the other hand, contributed to change the dynamics of family farming and the reproduction of crops. Regarding the methodological paths taken, the research was carried out in three rural communities where the interviews and the application of the questionnaires were carried out. A fundamental step to build dialogue, proximity and research of the strategies that farmers use to continue their way of life. With the most direct contact with the farmers of the municipality, it was possible to analyze how the land limitation, income and work make up the triad that feeds the poverty scenarios in rural families. The little land that conditions the low agricultural production influences the insertion of family members in activities outside the productive establishments, which, in turn, jeopardizes the reproduction of crops in greater quantity. However, even with the increasing presence of new elements and forms in the studied space, traditional practices of cooperation and work are still reproduced, important elements for the reproduction of family farming.