Questões agrária, agrícola e subdesenvolvimento no Brasil: o cooperativismo agrícola do MST como paradigma para o desenvolvimento sustentável – o caso COOPTERRA (ES/BA)

Abstract

This research has as its theoretical starting point the Agrarian and Agricultural Questions Paradigms configured from the implementation of the Plantation production mode during the Colonization of the territories of South America, specifically. In the case of Brazil, these paradigms are maintained through the action of the national oligarchic class, owner of the means of production in the primary sector, which corroborates the capitalist model of market and State, favoring the increase of social inequality and the historical exclusion of thousands of families, descendants of slaves and workers, not landowners. National production, still shaped by the relationship of dependence between former metropolises and former colonies, reinforces the country's historical structures of exploitation and underdevelopment. Characterized by the existence of landowner concentration, Brazil had the opportunity, during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula governments (1995 to 2010), to experiment with the implementation of a set of public policies for Agrarian Reform that contemplated family farming and the promotion of cooperatives. agriculture in settlements conquered by the MST. This set of public policies resulted in the recovery of the political prominence of the commitments declared during the Rio-92 – an event that was part of the international agenda on Sustainable Development for the reduction of planetary environmental damage guided and defended by the UN-FAO since 1987 to today – by contributing to the realization of Goal 2 (Zero Hunger and Family Farming) of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN (United Nations). As a case study on the feasibility of family farming cooperative work being qualified as a sustainable, anti-landlord, independent and sustainable model of production, we contacted the COOPTERRA cooperative, which produces the “Terra de Sabores” conilon coffee, grown in We settled in the states of Espírito Santo and Bahia. Although these public policies were incipiently dismantled in the Dilma government (2011-2016), with more significant cuts during the Temer government (2016-2018) and, in fact, excluded from the political agenda during the Jair Messias Bolsonaro government (2019- 2022), the cooperative remains in operation and economically stable, serving as an instrument for generating income and social inclusion for about 120 settled families, with negative impacts of negligible value on the environment. Finally, the thesis shows the limits of the performance of family and ecological agricultural practices in the context of underdeveloped Brazilian capitalism and presents a defense in favor of the management of public policies that have as their final objective the rupture with the agrarian and agricultural paradigms, pillars of the country's relationship of dependence on the international economy, which involves an agrarian reform plan, agricultural and administrative training for cooperatives, in favor of achieving food sovereignty and access to land and work for all who are deprived of these social rights . We conclude that the implementation of Sustainable Development, as guided and encouraged by the UN, if carried out, suggests the execution of a democratic, educational and consistent development plan for the practice of systemic sustainability, which contemplates the social, ecological and economic dimensions, and which, therefore, does not share with capitalist production practices.