What is understood by productive inclusion of family farmers? A bibliometric review study

Abstract

The issue of productive inclusion has been at the forefront of Brazilian political agenda, especially with the creation of a national territorial development policy and the program Brazil Without Poverty as strategies to eradicate poverty in rural areas. There is no consensus about the meaning of the term “productive inclusion” in the academic community, nor in the government environment, which is implicitly embraced by numerous public policies, without policy makers worrying about what it really represents. This article is a bibliometric review intended to analyze the scientific production on the theme: “productive inclusion of family farmers” as a way to understand what the authors perceive about the subject and what are the assertions about the empirical objects that are associated to it and addressed in the mapped studies. Among the results, it was pointed out that there is no clear and didactic conceptual definition of what is meant by the productive inclusion of family farmers, and the common sense perspective prevails. In turn, in order to enable strategies to reduce poverty and to introduce family farmers into markets, productive inclusion has become a recurring term in the academic and political agenda, which demonstrates the significance of this theme for several groups excluded from rural areas.