Da terra ao prato: um estudo das práticas de autoconsumo em um assentamento rural

Abstract

I ssues surrounding food production within the family agriculture system, where they grow their own food for self-consumption, are being focused by the academic reflection of Social Sciences as well as across all levels of government. This production system is strongly associated with the process of social reproduction but its evaluation, beyond the economic dimension, remains unclear. This research seeks to develop a qualitative sociological investigation on the food production for self-consumption among rural families settled in Monte Alegre farm, in the region of Araraquara, State of São Paulo. It was carried out an integrated analysis on the agricultural systems used in farming and growing food, involving family labor, and eventually, the dish of food of the settled families. Such analysis also included the fight for land and the autonomy as human being, the non-forced labor and family cohesion and the material and symbolic dimensions of social life. In order to collect data, a semi-structured questionnaire was completed headed to the main work assumptions; moreover it was applied methodological procedures, such as journeys and direct observation, daily field record, collection of menus, drawings, inventories, and also the photo-documentation of the lands. The records collected from the families indicate that, after a period where they had suffered expropriation of their territories, occurred by the agricultural modernization, the fight for land and the productive farming establishment in the land granted them another opportunity to grow their own food, reproducing techniques, landscapes and menus from a remaining memory of the agricultural life they experienced before the mentioned expropriation. The settled families recommence producing by their own efforts, supported on traditional agriculture practices, and the result is that growing food turned into provisions allowed them to recover the aspects of their social identity as food growers and producers, however, in a new social status. It can be concluded that employing such practices, it is possible to change the relations between family and land, which can be seen as a primary source of nutrients, as well as they allow experiments around sustainable agriculture, providing an assorted food basket that meets family s tastes and preferences, assuring food safety and guaranteeing the rights to food sovereignty.