It is not new that, in Brazil, agricultural activities that generate billion-dollar results still share the corners of the country with extreme poverty. Just over 15% of the country’s rural population experienced severe deprivation in 2019, around 5 million people. Another 17.6 million people (52.9% of the total) were poor. A worrying picture, which may have become even darker with the economic degradation during the pandemic.

In order for the situation to improve, the study “Productive Inclusion in Rural and Inland Brazil”, prepared by researchers from the sustainability nucleus of the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) in partnership with the Arymax and Tide Setubal Foundations and the Humanize Institute, proposes a long-term approach with public and private sector efforts.

The Household Budget Survey of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) shows that Brazil reduced the rate of people going hungry between 2004 and 2013, but the trend was reversed. In the last five years, the country has returned to the levels of food insecurity seen 15 years ago, according to data from the IBGE and the Brazilian Food and Nutrition Sovereignty and Security Research Network (Rede Penssan). In 2020 and 2021, the increase in severe food insecurity reached an average of 27.6%.

According to the group, the social problems in the countryside will not be solved with isolated actions of financing, technical assistance, digitalization and cooperatives. It is necessary to work on these different fronts to structure micro-producers. More than “teaching to fish”, the study defends the need to guarantee opportunities in the surroundings.

The research emphasizes that inequalities in the countryside are too complex a problem to be solved only by the government or the private sector. “It works better if we have coordination between these actors. The private sector has localized embryos and innovations, but it is far from being the rule. And it can’t be,” says researcher Arilson Favareto.

According to him, it is up to the government to stimulate, through fiscal policies, companies that prioritize the purchase of small producers, as in the biodiesel sector, in which a good part of the raw material comes from this group of farmers. The private sector, on the other hand, needs to understand that it is worth investing in the surroundings beyond the roads. The construction of schools, hospitals and commercial areas benefits the local economy, generates demand and also better qualifies the workforce, which can reduce costs later on.

Mr. Favareto says that the private sector is advancing in the environmental agenda, but social issues are in the background and can be aggravated in the process. The objective of the study, he reinforces, is not to demonize agribusiness, nor to encourage a dichotomous view. For example: if the mechanization of agricultural production is a reality, it is necessary to find ways out for the workers who lost their jobs along the way.

As modernization is an irreversible trend, according to him, it is necessary to create income alternatives in rural areas that are not directly associated with agribusiness. “There is, today, a faith that the strength of agribusiness will generate opportunities for everyone, but it will not. The trend is to save work. This problem will not be solved naturally,” he stresses. Mr. Favareto cites an article that identified a 67% drop in jobs in the sugar-alcohol sector between 2008 and 2018, to 213,400 from 652,900 employees.

Despite the fragility of the local economy in these more remote regions, 49% of the employed population residing in rural areas do not work in agricultural activity. In addition, 35% of those who work in agribusiness live in urban areas of municipalities. “It is necessary to look at the space and think about where the opportunities for inclusion of people through work are,” he says.

Finally, the researcher believes that the digitizalition of the segment also needs to be considered from a social point of view, so that there is no longer an abyss between large and small properties. The survey highlights that 71.8% of rural properties do not have internet access, according to the 2017 Agricultural Census. There are more than 3.6 million farms without internet connection.

In addition, much of the innovation for agribusiness is developed in the South-Central, focusing on the needs of producers in this region — only 7% of the almost 1,600 Brazilian agtechs are in the North and Northeast regions, according to the Radar Agtech 2021 report. “How will a researcher in the countryside of São Paulo develop a precise solution for a farmer in the up in Acre state? He won’t, it’s not his reality.”

According to the researcher, a strategy is needed to take agtechs to the peripheral regions of the country, as happened with large multinationals that opened operations in emerging countries to develop technologies suitable for those countries with very different conditions from rich nations, such as the United States and countries in Europe.

Source: Valor International

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