Racionalidade ambiental por parte de produtores rurais situados na região da nascente do Rio Grande

Abstract

The objective of this article is to identify and characterize the environmental reasoning of local farmers and agriculturalists by understanding the world views, perceptions, knowledge bases, and socio-environmental practices of two rural communities situated in the proximities of the source of the River Rio Grande, in the municipality of Bocaina de Minas, Minas Gerais. Specifically, this article attempts to characterize the meaning and importance that the natural resources have for these rural producers: to identify and analyze the use that these producers make of their resources, in order to understand what is the type of established relationship between these social actors and the natural world that envelopes them. This analysis is performed by qualitative analyzes, thereby allowing a privileged understanding of the behaviors and eliefs of the subjects under investigation. The results of the investigation show that the rural agricultural producers under study, live generally through subsistence farming - there are very few producers that engage in commercial production of agricultural goods. These social actors see themselves as an integrated part of the natural environment that surrounds them and have a well developed sense environmental rationale, and a reasoning system that guides their actions in relation to their use of natural resources. This rational is the fruit of the integration of their knowledge of their natural surroundings and ecosystems which they have acquired and developed for countless generations - we will call this traditional knowledge. In this sense, these rural producers can not only contribute greatly to our modern academic understanding of their practices but also to the knowledge of the modern diverse social actors who are trying to contemporaneously conserve not only the environment in which the traditional rural producers live, but also their traditional knowledge base itself, especially where this knowledge pertains to the native Flora and Fauna and in particular the specific natural cycles of this area.