Agricultura familiar, relações de poder e mercados institucionais: estudo de caso sobre o Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar no município de São Lourenço do Sul.

Abstract

From the Law 11.947/09 promulgation, state and municipal schools across the country are required to, among other requirements, to acquire at least 30% of the food offered in school meals (National School Feeding Program - PNAE), from family agriculture farms. This public policy offers to family farms, the possibility of access to a new institutional market, as well as an incentive to food production and the recognition and appreciation of this form of social production. However, some aspects related to the way farmers access this policy, their participation and especially the power relations existing explicit and implicit in this process, are central to the operation of this public policy. The questions that guided this study revolve around the understanding of what are the rules in this field, the prevailing capital and how to give the power disputes between the participating entities of PNAE, and between the agents inserted in these organizations. The empirical research involved sixteen interviews, with farmers, family agriculture leaders, politicians and schools’ directors located in urban areas of São Lourenço do Sul city. The results trigger a structural asymmetry existence in terms of resources, driven by the agents involved in the dynamics of PNAE, and consequently, the power held by each field in which it operates. This points divergences and contradictions in the PNAE participation process, in which relations are, according to what we can ascertain, conditional on the need for organization of the supply chain and compliance with the legal requirements of the Law 11.947/09 text. Being, in this perspective, the products most valued than the agent that produced, that is, the family farmer. In this sense, the Law 11.947/09 provided a new feeding practices adoption, but did not reach all the assumptions present in the Law 11.947/09, especially with regard to the recognition and appreciation of family agriculture.