Agricultura familiar, mercados institucionais e inclusão social: o caso do Restaurante Universitário da UFPel

Abstract

Family farming is a crucial social category for Brazil, both from the point of view of the number of employed people and in terms of food sovereignty objectives. There are millions of families responsible for producing much of the food that reaches the tables of Brazilians. In view of this reality, progressive governments in recent decades have designed public policies identified with the effort to strengthen this vocation. Among these policies are institutional markets, which are based on the acquisition of food from family farming for restaurants operated by the federal government. These markets have devices that guarantee the payment of a fair price, favor cooperative training, favoring the participation of women farmers. The participation of these farmers is made possible by waiving the bidding process, through “Public Calls”. In this sense, UFPel undertook a project to purchase food from family farming to serve three of its cafeterias, which provided a daily average of three to four thousand meals to its guests. UFPel's institutional purchases are noteworthy for having developed protection devices for farmers, such as: weekly forecast of food to be delivered, comprising semiannual periods; respect for seasonality; preference for foods that respect regional eating habits; involvement and participation of cooperatives and rural extension institutions. The study presented here focused on the quantitative data of the notices prepared for public calls, as well as the control reports of these acquisitions. It also sought from the social actors who participated in institutional purchases, qualitative information that accounted for the dynamics that involved the operation of this unique market, to which nine family farming cooperatives in the Southern Region of Rio Grande do Sul were connected. , under the coordination of the University Support Foundation, about five million reais during the period between the years 2013 and 2017. The institutional purchases of RE-UFPel promoted sustainable rural development, strengthening social networks, intercooperation and protagonism family farming. However, despite being a successful process, it was interrupted in 2018 due to the bureaucratic requirements of the control bodies. UFPel ended up implementing a process of outsourcing its cafeterias, giving up the achievements of the last decade.