Percepções acerca da operacionalização do PRONAF no município de Unaí – MG

Abstract

This study design was based on the conception that PRONAF is an important development tool for family farming and, as a public policy of support for this farmers it is a mechanism for inclusion of this social category in the production process. It was aimed to integrate the characteristics of qualitative and quantitative approaches to analyze the difficulties involved in credit taken of PRONAF in the city of Unaí -MG from the perception of the actors involved in the process. To mediate the general objective, it sought to collect which are the financial institutions that operationalize PRONAF, the volume of funds used in crop 2010/2011 to 2014/2015 and map the flow of operating processes and granting of credits in the levels of ATERs and financial agent. Visits to financial institutions and ATER companies were carried out to identify those that participate in the SNCR and operationalize the PRONAF. Semistructured interviews were directed to family farmers, beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries from the credit, and to local actors directly and indirectly involved with the operation of the Program. Altogether, thirty-six resource plaintiff family farmers in the 2014/2015 harvest were surveyed, beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the feature, and eight representatives of local actors. Among the results, it is emphasized that: the release of funds is concentrated on BB, which has a personnel structure insufficient to meet the demand of the family farmers of the municipality, and on Caixa, through cooperatives, and that other local financial institutions have little interest in operating PRONAF; the resources are largely directed to traditional activities and especially to livestock; little integration between local actors, failures in communication and propagation of the program and the dependence of documents from other agencies slow operational flows and granting credits; except the settlers assisted by the Public Call of INCRA, technical assistance is restricted, in practice, to the preparation of projects; PRONAF is perceived positively by local actors and family farmers. The major difficulties identified by respondents are related to: commercialization of the production; deficiency in technical assistance and in monitoring the implementation of resources; and, particularly, it was pointed out difficulties with the financial agent because of the accuracy of the guarantees, the deficiency attendance and the gap between the release of funds and the real need of the plaintiff, the preference for traditional projects and to farmers who can assure better returns and providing accountability for release of funds. Also, it was noted, among the family farmers surveyed, that these difficulties do not impact the decision making by the use of credit.