Brazilian small farmers see future in cooperatives

Mirandiba, Agency
Brazilian small farmers, battered by the consequences of rainfall shortages and intense price competition from large agricultural enterprises, are turning to cooperatives as a means of making their way of life viable.

One cooperative - located in this remote town in a semi-arid part of the northeastern state of Pernambuco - is one example of a member-owned association that brings farmers together to sell their products at a fair price and get maximum yield from their harvests.

Located 423 kilometers (260 miles) west of Recife, it is home to 15,000 inhabitants, half of them peasants whose only income comes from growing lettuce, cassava, eggplant and different types of fruit.

"There's a national machinery to combat and farmers don't have much experience with that," Conviver coordinator Dorivaldo de Sa, known affectionately as "Vava," said.

According to Vava, small farmers face many difficulties when attempting to sell their produce and find it impossible to compete with the prices offered by companies that monopolize the market.

But with support and counseling from the international group ActionAid, Conviver entered a Brazilian government-sponsored food-supply program that enables small farmers to sell their produce to the state for distribution among the region's public schools.

Thanks to subsidies and state aid, 60 percent of the 468 families enrolled in the program have had latrines built at their homes and received training aimed at increasing crop yields.

Nevertheless, stiff price competition is not the only threat to northeastern Brazil's small farmers, who also must cope with recurrent drought in that region.

In Mirandiba, as in much of northeastern Brazil, farmers depend on army tanker trucks to supply them with water.

During the May-November dry season, crop yields decline drastically and some growers have no choice but to emigrate to more productive farming areas, while others, tired of depending on favorable weather conditions to survive, leave the region to work as day laborers in the country's southeast, though that means renouncing the chance to be autonomous and work their own fields.

To combat that phenomenon, the Mirandiba local government is supporting a Conviver initiative to stem the exodus.

"Family farming is the basis for everything and we want to salvage a town that people think has been completely destroyed," Mayor Bartolome Tiburtino told.