Determinantes da tomada de decisão sobre as atividades produtivas rurais: proposta de um modelo para a produção familiar.

Abstract

The family small farms represent a very important segment in the national economy since it plays an important role in food production, incoming generation and distribution and land occupation. However, this segment is characterized by an inadequate management, which commits its competitiveness. The main aim of this reasearch is to propose a practical and accessible production planning model for vegetables raising family farms, which can help them to consider internal and external factors when deciding what to produce. The methodology had four main stages: (i) interviews with families that raise vegetables from São Carlos, São Paulo, in order to identify the production systems and the planning of the production activities; (ii) working out a planning model; (iii) interviews with rural management and vegetable production specialists, to confirm factors used in the model, the weights given to each factor and the notes for the possibilities of the producer reality; (iv) correction and final mode s working out. When interviewing the producers, it was observed that they don t have many years of formal education, most of the families are led by 30 39 years old men, there is a wide participation of women in the labor and few producers have employees. Within 33 interviewed producers, 11 have decided to get specialized, producing from 1 to 5 vegetables options, specially the green ones. The producers do not have a structured methodology to make decisions, and they do not consider all the factors that may influence the decision of what they should produce. Concerning to the planning model, the considered factors in the decision were grouped in internal (natural, human, financial and technological resources) and external (demand, offer and support services), but the use of weights were adopted only with the internal factors. The interviewed specialists emphasized the importance of making the correct decision about choosing the product variety to be raised and also about getting organized through associations and cooperatives. This study is an initial reasearch , which may be used as a subsidy for other rural planning studies. Although the decision model proposed has been developed to be used by producers, it may be also useful for rural projects, cooperatives, associations and financial agents, since it proposes a methodology to analyze the products options.