Agricultura Familiar e Mercados Institucionais (protegidos): estudo sobre o Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (CPR Doação) em Boa Vista, Roraima.

Abstract

The present work has as objective to analyze the development of the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) in its modality Purchase with Simultaneous Donation, in the municipality of Boa Vista, Roraima state, Brazil. In the study modality, the products are purchased by the federal government and donated to institutions in a situation of social fragility through associations and cooperatives of family farmers. Considering PAA is a program whose occurrence requires the participation of the local society and appropriate coordination between public organisms and social agents in charge of its implementation and monitoring, it is interesting to know to what extent the existing social relations in Roraima territory can promote or hinder the program development. In this sense, this paper analyzes the social network generated around PAA in the municipality of Boa Vista and how farmers are integrated to it and relate to the rest of the social and institutional actors. In order to understand how this market is built by social actors of Roraima, the arguments of the theoretical framework of economic sociology were triggered. Through them, we see that the basic conception that the economy is subjected to social relationships becomes fundamental to understand that markets involve actors who, jointly, establish relations within concrete institutional structures. This sent us to also use the theoretical and analytical framework of family farming and public policies for food security, maintaining dialogue with the theory of social capital, and also of social networks. From the methodological point of view, we used qualitative methodology due to the subjectivity of the research object, only liable to seizure through techniques that allow direct and profound manifestation of the investigated subjects. The results pointed to important social and economic advances for the producer and consumer beneficiaries. However, it was also verified that there are limits to the application of structuring public policies in locations marked by land access problems and the effect of consolidated through time social hierarchies. The in-depth study of PAA social network showed us its debilities and its fragile sustainability, configured in the network domain exercised by few actors who monopolize the flow of relationships between the other components and it can be interpreted, in terms of social capital, as one weakness sign.