Produção e conservação de recursos na agricultura familiar dos gerais sanfranciscanos, semiárido de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The general of the Minas Gerais portion of the São Francisco river are vast plains sandy low vegetation and winding, cut by veredas and swamps where rural population is concentrated. This farmer population has an agrarian scheme of fl uid spatiality, reduced dependence on rainfall, which combined the use of dry forest, gerais and wetlands to farming .The agrarian modernization in the 1970s stimulated the uptake of plateaus by agricultural and reforestation; the expansion of the protected areas from the 1990s created new restrictions on the customary use of natural resources by farmers. Harassed in the veredas by rural companies and prohibited to exploit them by environmental agencies, farmers were forced to build new production systems and identities; then reformulated schemes of domination and exploitation of the land to keep the peasant logic of reproduction. Based on research and extension activities with rural population of the Upper / Middle, semiarid northern Minas Gerais, this article examines these trajectories, revealing how the process at the same time asks and constantly rebuilds the foundations of the traditional agrarian system. This paper concludes that the privatization of plateaus remains severely affecting the basic underpinnings of peasant farming systems of resources use and the alternatives tested until the present - change in farming systems, sustainable crops and agroextractivism - were insuffi cient to restore the conditions of reproduction the rural population.