Políticas públicas y alternativas agroecológicas en Brasil: perspectivas para la seguridad y soberanía alimentaria.

Abstract

The authors show us the two faces of Brazil’s rural development over the last fifteen years. Despite the fact that chemical agriculture with a clear exporting vocation continues to persist and dominate in this country (given the great bearing it has on the configuration of public policies both at the Central State level as well as at the Federal States level) the importance of family agriculture is on the rise. The social, environmental and political relations that make up peasant family agriculture are now at the core of the debate on food sovereignty. The strong advance experimented by Brazilian family agriculture is neither indifferent to the appearance of agro-ecological groups in all 27 Federal States that have been able to spread their transforming power to thousands of experiences in rural development production all over this vast country nor to its capacity to have a bearing on the agriculture policy designed and developed since the Partido dos Trabalhadores came to power in central government. The authors show us how agro-ecology has moved forward in academia, even despite all the contradictions this new political class has incurred in, with more than a hundred newly-created university courses, along with the economic experiences of farmers, in rural research and extension, as well as in family agriculture movements and in the organization of delegations. All of this, as the authors show, forms the ground for the advancement of the construction of a national project steered by food sovereignty and security, sustainability, democracy and solidarity principles.