Small-scale soybean farming: a strategy for social reproduction of family farming?

Abstract

In Brazil, soybean production has been rapidly expanding, increasingly concentrated among medium and large rural producers. In family farming, this cultivation has been marked, on one hand, by movements towards professionalization and productive specialization, or on the other hand, by dynamics of exclusion and exit from the activity. Despite these two predominant trajectories, this research focuses on contexts where soybeans take different paths within family farming. Thus, the objective of this study is to analyze the dynamics and distinct roles of soybean production in the social reproduction strategies of family farmers, specifically looking at small-scale soybean growers who have continued cultivating soybeans on areas smaller than ten hectares over time. For this purpose, bibliographic research and secondary data analysis were conducted, in addition to field research in Salvador das Missões (RS) in 2003 and 2018, where seven farming families were selected for continuing small-scale soybean cultivation during both periods analyzed. The results show that among the families studied, soybean production has remained present as part of a mosaic of multiple and interconnected activities and income sources. In these cases, soybeans did not necessarily promote a process of specialization or depeasantization, being part of a broader set of different social reproduction strategies for family farmers.

Keywors: family farming; productive specialization; soybeans; Rio Grande do Sul.