Horizontes, caminhos e labirintos: dinâmicas da sucessão geracional na pecuária familiar do extremo sul do Brasil

Abstract

Finding abandoned houses and properties for sale is not unusual in rural areas of Rio Grande do Sul. In many regions, what used to be a place of intense social activity has become a place of deserted houses, that is, “a land that has already been inhabited and cultivated” according to Martins (2014, p.128) and that sadly faces abandonment. It is the visible image of a crisis that has fallen on many family establishments, frequently reported in written and spoken media in the southern states of the country. This phenomenon reflects situations where the chain of transmission of land assets and the exploitation of family assets to their descendants, for the most different reasons, have been definitively broken. This doctoral thesis is based on a research that aimed to understand the dispositions that involve the successional dynamics in family farming rural establishments from Jaguarão/RS. The research, methodologically, was a qualitative research based on the use of in-depth interviews as an instrument for data collection. Thirty-one interviews were done, in the period between October 2019 and March 2020, of which twenty-nine with family ranchers (fathers, mothers and children, including non-successor children, who did not keep living in the rural establishments) and two with agents from the official rural extension service local. The data were treated using the content analysisa technique. The theoretical framework was based on studies that analyze the singularities of the family rancher as a social actor, as well as the generational succession as an object of study, starting from the sociological perspective centered on Lahire's heritage of dispositions. The research findings are organized around three categories of analysis: the first focuses on the panorama drawn by the social actors about their own reality; the second category concerns family succession in the perception of the interviewed individuals; the third discusses the future of the family rancher as a social productive activity. The results highlighted that the reality and the context surrounding family ranchers and their rural establishments, such as the expansion of the soy planted area and the closing of rural schools, are factors that directly interfere in the social reproduction of these families. Two factors are essential for generational succession: on the one hand, the enjoyment of the activity, on the other, the vocation. According to the results, there is no defined pattern of succession in family farming. For most respondents, the future scenario looks bleak, with less and less population in rural areas. However, possible solutions were also pointed out, such as the creation of public policies and the greater involvement of young people and women in activities related to rural establishments and in the decisions that affect your future.