[interview: Nayla Almeida]: sieges and pressures on familiar agriculture
farmers' markets are not enough to sustain agricultural families in Brazil: without public policies for crop purchase, individual consumption is a drop in the ocean to break advancing agribusiness
this issue was translated by Eduardo Stigger 📧 eduardo.stigger@gmail.com
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On February 10th, a nine years old boy was shot dead in an assault against a family of farmers. While trying to hide under the bed with his mother, the boy was shot after seven hooded men shot his surviving father. Geovane da Silva Santos is president of the Associação dos Agricultores Familiares de Engenho Roncadorzinho (Family Agriculture Association of Engenho Roncadorzinho), in the town of Barreiros, in Pernambuco state. He got a flesh wound on his shoulder, either by luck or sadism. His son succumbed to his injuries soon after arriving at the hospital.
The town of Barreiros is tiny when compared to the size of Brazil and the amount of food produced daily in our territory. A story on Portal G1 talks about the battle for an area of 790 hectares by the 70 families of former workers of the bankrupt estate of Usina Santo André, who didn’t receive their labor rights. They have been there for 40 years. It turns out that ten years ago the land was leased (by the Judiciary itself?) to Agropecuária Javari, which started planting sugarcane in monoculture. For at least five years the conflicts have been going on: the destruction of family farmers' farmland, and deliberate use of pesticides to contaminate the water supply of these families and their crops.
Harassment and executions in the field are the most faithful portraits of Brazil, from north to south. In Viúvas da Terra ("Widows of the Land", in English), Kléster Cavalcanti, a journalist, narrates the story of women who lost their partners to land and forest conflicts. In Torto Arado, the struggle for autonomy and self-determination of quilombo1 communities is shown in the plot, poetically at first, but raw in the end. One is journalism, the other fiction. Both are real stories that show how long ago the routine of killing to demobilize had started. To remember some of the names from the region where Geovane’s son died, the Comissão Pastoral da Terra Nordeste II keeps a timeline with the names of all of the workers who died in land conflicts from 1988 to 2016 at the end of this page.
If rightful occupations such as Engenho Roncadorzinho are under direct threat, familiar agriculture “without land disputes” (many quotes here) is under another type of siege, also debilitating to nutritional and alimentary security and sovereignty. But this one is clean and looks legal. “We call it ‘pressure’,” says Nayla Almeida, agronomist by Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and mastering in Rural Development at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), who researches nested markets. We talked in early January, by phone, and she is probably about to defend her dissertation as you read these lines.
Small farmers usually have more diverse produce in their land, which cannot be traded in. There is a cash crop that may be predominant (sold to agroindustries and is the one that pays the bills), while the vegetable plot, aside, is destined to feed the family. It seems a sustainable logic if it weren’t more and more common for them to stop growing their own plot to increase the area destined for the cash crop. In the “pressure” many industries economically pressure this small producer. “The payment decreases, as well as the demand. They shunt the producer and the diversified produce loses space. In the rural area, expenses with feeding are very high, as shown by the Research of Family Budget. Much of this is linked to this pressure, a situation in which that property has to produce single merchandise to keep going,” she said.
That’s where Nayla’s research comes in. The concept of nested markets is relatively new in Brazil, and it refers to trade channels nested in social relations. The one dictating the dynamic in a nested market is not the product, but the arrangements that configure the trades within.
"Soy market can happen anywhere in Brazil because it has technology for that. Nested markets, however, are connected to specific social and spatial contexts, built by people and ideas, and created in the space in which they have developed,” explains Nayla. Namely: soy (and other commodities) don’t need an established relation between territory, people, and the use of that product.
I cannot stress this enough: soy, corn, sugarcane, and other exports cultivated in monoculture or that cover large areas in a small property are always taking away space that could grow food for the population of the country. The land is finite, but mouths multiply – we are 212,6 million Brazilians – and the pressure of the agribusiness to expand soy fields in the last years caused, in 2022, the smallest planted area of rice, beans, and cassava in the historical series. There will be less food and the prices of these ingredients will skyrocket again.
On the horizon of nested markets researchers is the idea of broadening the view of the society and governance to the need for familiar agriculture to have access to other spaces – selling in farmers markets, for supply centers or supermarkets, for example, are channels inside a nested market, but they cannot be the only ones.
"A channel other than the global market must be made feasible for agriculture. The farmer cannot be subordinated to a single channel. They should have more channels to have autonomy within the context of the farm and be able to choose which channel to access in the space he is inserted," she says. When there is one single way, such as the selling of produce to a large industry, is the equivalent of leaving the small farmer in the hands of the market, which does not consider the big picture, only the product. This is another way the “pressure” happens.
Public policies such as the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) and the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) guarantee extra channels (and a guaranteed minimum sale) for family farmers and made them have diverse produce to supply schools, hospitals, nursing homes, popular restaurants, penitentiaries, public stocks, and others. The vision of public policies was national, but it happened locally. With this diversity in production, the quality of everyone’s feeding increases – from the small farmer to other citizens – and the price of food is “payable” for all Brazilians.
Some say that the farming of fruit, cereal, vegetables, greens, meat, dairy, and eggs of familiar agriculture is little, but it’s by adding pounds that we get to tons.
Does an increase in the commodities yield guarantee a positive balance of trade? Yes. But the money originating from these exports hardly enters public coffers: the tax paid by agribusiness is minimum, while the values in tax exemption are huge. Using tax originating from the export of commodities is not enough to import food from other countries, and that has to be paid in US dollars (at this moment, one dollar costs R$ 5,13). As I said before, this is the less efficient way to feed a population. Balance of trade is not the only indicator of a country’s health, let alone in a country where agribusiness and processed food walk side-by-side.
Nayla worked with rural extension focused on familiar agriculture instead of big markets, as usual in Agronomy courses. The group she was part of helped small farmers with documentation and intermediated contact with city halls. “I saw that there was much to understand in familiar agriculture beyond looking at the short distribution channels,” she recalls. “Every place will have specific dynamics according to institutional and governmental devices. Looking at the market allows us to understand the small farmer inside this dynamics of selling and purchasing food products. To what extent do social relations allow the shaping of a favorable market for the small farmer, so that they are better paid?” she questions.
I wrote Nayla after reading her article in Agência Bori on nested markets, in which I highlighted the following excerpt:
Of course, global alimentary systems will keep existing. Food flow will keep flooding the supermarkets with more of the same, with hundreds of new products seemingly diverse. However, at the same time and eventually, in the same place, there are other possible marketing arrangements: nested markets may be supply options beyond conventional supermarkets, as converging structures of the value produced by thousands of small farmers.
The interview was edited and organized for better understanding.
Was there anything that surprised you during the research?
I work on the idea of territorial markets, which are economic trades located in a space, but with characteristics such as cultural traditions, cultural values, mechanisms of economic trades specific to the location. I went on to study the Ubá mango, in Minas Gerais, in the city of Ubá. It is a variety that doesn’t have the market standards we usually see: it is small, really yellow, really fibrous, really sweet. There is a traditional celebration, a traditional sweet treat called mangada. Local inhabitants prefer this mango to the other kind. The Ubá mango market emerges from this area. You will have this product in the farmers market, houses of candy makers (who don’t even sell in markets) and there was even a process of patrimonialization started by the city hall.
There was a movement by large agroindustry that moved to the area to buy this mango because it is so sweet that it decreases the amount of sugar needed to sweeten the juice. The industry mixes the Ubá mango with other kinds to produce the juice. In this process, the specificity of the mango is lost.
The farmers of the Ubá area are very independent, they don’t have a cooperative, and the assistance of Emater is not enough to help them. [Developing the specificity of this market of Ubá mango] Could bring advantages that are still dormant. This way, the demand is tied down and subordinated to a global market of concentrated juice. There could be, for example, a line of credit to cooperatives, a public policy regarding the production of mango. This is just one example of a single situation, but there are many specific products in Brazil based on social relations. It’s not only the global market through the law of supply and demand that commands economic trades. There’s plenty of produce trade with Ubá mango, there are farmers that donate mangoes to the candy makers to make mangada. It is a very particular local dynamic.
You research familiar agriculture. At this moment, many of us can only tell that everything is dismantled. Can you exemplify what this dismantling of the PAA and National Council of Nutritional and Food Safety (CONSEA) means, direct and indirectly?
Specifically in the PAA, there is a worsening of the quality of food supplied to schools and hospitals. There have always been critics because the price was low, but it was a guaranteed sale. It was a channel that ceased to exist. In this production, the farmer either tries to allocate somewhere else or stops producing, since there is no demand. They can even sell cheaper than they would sell to PAA or lose their produce.
The CONSEA was the main place to debate food security. If it were in action, they would have researchers to assist the federal government and bring this data to create public policies. Since they ceased to be this intermediary between civil society and the State, there’s no link to think of public policies related to reality.
The liberation of pesticides in Brazil and the levels of pesticides, which are beyond acceptable, was debated by the CONSEA. In the PNAE, for example, in which 30% of school feeding should come from familiar agriculture when there were some irregularities or hassle, that was solved by the city council.
The PAA also had the role of regulating the price of purchase of food to keep in public stock. A visible result was the price of the rice, be it for agricultural issues or for consuming more than producing. When the stock decreased, there was no rice [in public stock to be put on the market] to regulate the price, and we had to import from Uruguay. The ones who profited from that were three big rice industries in Brazil.
When you talk about nested markets, the dynamics that organize them happen through demand? Or demands, considering different consuming groups?
A nested market is a social institution and is not always inserted in the logic of financial gain, because it has no notion of gain. It is reciprocity, a real mutual exchange. The farmer has an abundant mango tree, he won’t miss it if he donates some. There’s the case of donating firewood for the candy makers to cook the candy on the woodstove. These local forces strengthen the local community and structure this society. That’s what bonds this area and permeates economic trades.
In all these informal trading arrangements, it’s very easy to see these dynamics. We only call it informal because there’s no due date or contract. There’s less mediation by institutions, and the price is not the only factor that arbitrates the trade.
The PAA is a market that is not local, but many times it happens at a national area level. There was the simultaneous donation modality – institutional purchase for schools, hospitals, and charities. This is a formal market, but it acts locally.
A public policy such as the PAA was the connection between agricultural produce and population with food insecurity. If we had a public policy that showed the link between these land and areas to the trading of these products, that showed the way this land was acquired, such as the land reform seal of the Landless Workers (MST, the acronym in Portuguese), maybe this would be perfectly clear: the fact that food doesn’t come from a vacuum, it comes from working the land. There are orchards [of Ubá mango] that are being reduced to plant guava to sell it for agroindustries, for instance. It is a land in dispute.
We refer to this as pressure and economic pressure. The pay is smaller, and so is the demand. They shunt the producer and the diversified production loses space.
Do nested markets have to do with preserving traditional eating habits?
Not necessarily. You can also be dealing with conventional products. The specificity of these nested markets encompasses social arrangements and economic trades. Inside these trades, there is reciprocity, monetary exchange, donation… there are many trades, not only in the scope of monetization.
The production of milk, for example: it can supply for a big brand, but the producer will also make some amount available for someone to make cheese. This is a nested market, but it is not about a traditional eating habit. There can also be traditional eating habits within that.
Only a few researchers are discussing this nested market matter in Brazil. But the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] already uses the term territorial market. In Brazil, it is an incipient debate, but it comes from the idea of short distribution channels.
Is there a way to recover the strength of the PAA?
I don’t have such familiarity with the subject of the PAA, it was dismantled in 2016/17. The criticism arose with Operation Agro-ghost, in which there were reports of cooperatives using overpriced invoices. It was bureaucratic stuff. Since the PAA is a structuring public policy, it should have a closer watch.
The PAA worked well, despite the troubles. It was not only a dynamic of purchasing food, but it made the organization of rural properties be in a completely different way.
The farmers needed some assistance with documentation and other stuff, they needed some human resources to deal with these demands and doubts. But after it was all settled, with support and direction, they could buy equipment, like a farmer that bought a vacuum sealer to pack cassava. They know how to grow food, the issue is this dialogue with the city hall and other institutions.
How can the rural extension be present in the small farmers' sector?
From what I saw in two years, and see today in my field research, we have very few workers of rural extension to attend to small farmers. The EMATER [Institute of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension] are institutions that need human and financial resources to handle the demand. Farmers participate in many markets. They can produce soy, so they need a productive variety and instruction regarding pesticides. But they will also produce other things, for other kinds of consumption. They can produce green leaves for the local market and then will need assistance to find this market, where they will sell. When they have family living on the farm, they will have a higher diversity, and that is larger in cooperativism. They hire an extensionist to deal with this documentation.
All the farmers talk about having too much labor to end up selling to supply centers or agroindustry, and not to a market that pays for this added value.
For example, specialty coffee demands a high investment, in addition to packing and knowing where to sell this added value product. The farmers have to be willing to perform multiple tasks, to dedicate themselves to finding the market that will pay for this coffee. These specialty products are only sustainable because that specific product is one of a series of others produced by this farmer. There is always some level of diversity in the produce of the farms, otherwise, they wouldn’t go on [producing something special].
There is a lack of human and financial resources. It’s very easy to have a large part of the production turned to soy, rice, or tobacco because it’s a market with standardized documentation
The digital platforms are coming in strong, and these new arrangements will soon be a reality. It would be interesting to promote that, a website that could congregate for the town hall all the possible supply chains for the family farmer. I didn’t have this schematic chart of every producer and consumer in my research, but Zenicléia Deggeroni defended her thesis in December 2021 and has one [table of market typologies based on Sérgio Schneider].
Can the supply centers be understood as a channel to guarantee food safety?
The genesis of the supermarket is private. They have sales, they hold on to products, etc. Yet, the governmental apparatus has a more social side to it. The National Company Of Supply (CONAB) dictates the price of basic food practiced by the Supply Centers (CEASA). It relies on local context because it is a supply center. From that, small markets, farmers' markets, and others will stock up considering availability and price. And many [CEASA] have a food donation department. They donate to schools and institutions. The supply centers [CEASA] are essential regarding food supply. CONAB doesn’t have this anymore: now they buy in smaller volumes, and before they would distribute this [larger] purchase through CEASA to balance the price. These organizations are important for food safety and the centralization of regional food supply for distribution.
This brings me a question that I would like to know if it makes sense: buying on farmers' markets alone doesn’t guarantee the existence of familiar agriculture.
No. You have the organic market, collaborative stores, like Chão Institute and the Farmers Market Institute, and they are very good, but the main criticism is that they all act on higher-income neighborhoods. What is there in the low-income neighborhoods? Big chain supermarkets, farmers' markets are far from dense populations. You see a lot of açai stores2, for example, mini markets. It’s a very recurring phenomenon. I want to study this phenomenon of the food system of a large urban center.
The existence of farmers' markets in low-income areas is very rare and industrialized products prevail. When you see this you start thinking differently. Organics are not a priority in this context, it’s a much deeper issue.
There will always be someone to fill in the gaps. Fundação Getúlio Vargas has created a platform connecting small markets to consumers. But we would like the State to give this support.
In this moment of highly individualized eating habits in larger urban centers, based on specific diets that assign a different value to food (e.g. people who think it’s healthier to eat gluten-free pasta than rice and beans), what can be done to reconnect people with local food in big cities?
It’s very complicated. In Agronomy, we would discuss environmental education. How can you discuss that when most people don’t have basic sanitation? Some researchers discuss these themes by talking about the environment, market, and eating habits. How can you talk about this in urban centers? We always get back to the public apparatus. I think about urban gardens in schools, for all age groups, to nurture this consciousness from zero to 17 years old, that environment and eating are deeply connected.
For adults, stimulating debate and connecting eating and environment, explain that they are communal. If you can choose, you can also choose how to impact the environment. I feel uneasy about this. I used to have a gig in this farmers market, and we went to this luxury gated community once, they would have the market there once a week.
The biggest concern of these people [gated community people] is that they have to buy vegetables that are free of pesticides. How can you discuss environmental consciousness with these people if their way of life itself is degrading and they feel no consequence of that?
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NT [Luciane Maesp]: During the colonial period in Brazil, quilombos were hidden spots in the forests where the enslaved that could run went to live. Nowadays, the quilombos house mixed ethnicity, but keep sharing African ancestry. They form a community that stands up against the urbanization process and for a simple life in contact with nature. Lourence Alves talks about it in this interview.
NA: Açaí is an Amazonian palm fruit, usually dark purple and with a slightly bitter and earthy flavor. Its pulp is prepared with water to make a kind of porridge to drink in different meals of the Amazonian peoples, and its production was from extractivism for subsistence in this region. With the popularization of the fruit in the rest of Brazil, the pulp began to be sold frozen and sweetened, having been adopted as a frozen dessert, changing the form of consumption and also the production of the fruit. When talking about an açaí store, the reference is to places outside the North of the country that work like an ice cream shop, where the customer can add fruits, syrups, and other toppings to the frozen pulp. Açaí became popular in Brazil also for concentrating vitamins and nutrients that made it receive the status of a superfood, and thus entered the diet of athletes and people who seek a healthy diet because it is a food very concentrated in energy and health benefits.