AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND SMALL HOLDER PRODUCTION: AN ILLUSIVE DISCOURSE

Abstract

The author discusses the question of discrimination against small peasant production within Brazilian agricultural policies over the years, in spite of the fact that the official discourse not rarely insists in placing it as a preferential option in the definition of its strategies. First, the particular form of organization of small production, differentiations, productive logic and forms of subordination to capital, are characterized. Next, conceptual and operational aspects of agricultural policy are touched on, attempting to frame them in the more ample field of reference of global economic policy. Then the author discusses the intervention of the state as a conductor of this process, class relations and capitalistic accumulation. Having drawn this picture, the author attempts to explain why the instruments of agricultural policy in Brazil have historically been placed at the service of segments of the dominant classes, detrimental to small peasant production.