Local contributions to rural development: a study case about the biodiversity uses intwo traditional peasant communities of Mato Grosso state - Brazil

Abstract

The occultation or marginalization to the western rationality of great part of the experience and of thecreativity which exists amongst the peasants who live in the territorial and agricultural borders of Brazil–in the state of Mato Grosso, the Morraria region, where the cerrado (the Brazilian savannah)phytophysionomy predominates, constitutes the main question of the study. This occurs due to the“invisibility”or“non-existence”, hence they are not seen and their own existence is denied. Either thedominant view notices their existence but disappear and deny a role in the process of development,suppressing or destroying everything related to their form of production and organization, such as thetraditional knowledge, the peasantry forms of sociability, or their peculiar relation with the environment.The study started out of an ethnographic study in two rural localities to understand, among others, thelocal productive strategies, where it was possible to get to know a complex and multifaceted reality. Intheir productive strategy, the peasants of Morraria use and value the biodiversity managing complexnatural and agricultural systems. They use a huge spectrum of harvest and domesticated and non-domesticated animals (agrobiodiversity), which requires a very complex knowledge as well. One of thesuppositions is that traditional knowledge on biodiversity can be revealing of ideas and coevolutivevalues related to their culture and its reproduction as a social category. From the Agroecological point ofview, we suppose that between the peasants of Morraria, one can find many useful elements to developagricultural strategies suited to the complexity of the agroecological and socioeconomics processes andthus, design technologies and agricultural systems that satisfy their specific needs. On the other hand, toextract agroecological principles susceptible of offering to other productive sectors, provide tools todesign sustainable agroecosystems. This study englobes, thus, dimensions of the directly relateddiversity, such as the sociocultural and biological.