Rural Voices: Rationality in agroforestry systems on south of Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Devantier Henzel, Ana Beatriz
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: de Souza Gomes Guarino, Ernestino, Noronha, Alberi, Crizel Gomes, Gustavo, Koiti Miura, Adalberto
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista IDEAS (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistaideas.ufrrj.br/ojs/index.php/ideas/article/view/310
• topic: SAF; Restauração Ecológica; Agricultura Familiar; Agricultores; Agroecologia; AFS; Ecological Restoration; Family Farming; Farmers; Agroecology

Agroforestry systems (AFS) or Agroforestry enables the farmer to combine agricultural production with environmental preservation. Understanding the motivation of family farmers to redesign productive units through AFS serves to support public policies, programs and projects related to the issue. Therefore, in order to understand the rationality that motivates farmers to choose the development of AFS on their properties, ten families of farmers with agroforestry experience in Serra do Tapes, in southern Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, were interviewed semi structured interviews with the objective of identifying the motivations that led families to dedicate themselves to agroforestry and relating these motivations to the concepts of instrumental and substantive rationality. For all families, AFS are not the main source of agricultural income, reserving the system a more important role in the ecological field, since the majority of farmers opted for agroforestry in order to restore degraded agroecosystems and produce clean food for self-consumption. However, economic returns are also expected. Agroforestry farmers value good agricultural practices and see agroforestry as an alternative in the pursuit of food and nutritional security, income generation and conservation of agroecosystems.