PEASANT IDENTITY AND AGROECOLOGICAL PRODUCTION: POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS AT CUNHA SETTLEMENT IN CIDADE OCIDENTAL, GOIÁS STATE

Abstract

This paper has as an objective to analyze to what extent the peasant identity offered possibilities for the territorialization of the agroecological production at Cunha Settlement. For this reason, bibliographic and field research was performed, with application of structured and semi-structured interview. The results indicate changes in the peasant identity, because sixteen family nucleus members make collective decisions about the work and four women run the plots. In addition, fifty-seven respondents have lived their childhood and youth in the country and part of their adult life in urban centers. Nevertheless, twenty-eight interlocutors highlight the presence of relations of mutual help at the settlement, 53% believe that the land assures farming reproduction, 18% perceive the land as a unity society/nature, being that thirty-seven families affirm that the children follow their parents in labor activities. However, it also aggravates the problem of the rural succession, twenty-three families have elderly members, being that 28% of the settled people are at this age group and 44% of the families are in the final stage of existence. But the territorialization of the agroecological production was also potentiated by the peasant reciprocity, with the relations of knowledge exchange, of techniques and of seeds. On the other hand, the peasant knowledge contributed with the production of fertilizers, with the selection of seeds, with the handling of the species “plague”, among other processes. Therefore, the monopolization of the settlement by the capital, causes the migration of labor, what brings about damage to the agroecological production.