Food insecurity in rural settlements: the case of PDS Mário Lago (SP)

• Grant number: 22/12678-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): January 01, 2023
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Rural Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Joelson Gonçalves de Carvalho
• Grantee: Ana Claudia Olartechea Veron
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Food insecurity (FI) has intensified in the last years in Brazil, because of, between many factors, the dissasembly of public policies related to family farming, the rise of unemployment and the Covid-19 pandemic impacts. Talking about the general phenomenon, rural areas concentrate the highest poverty and food insecurity rates in the country, reaching 35% of all rural housing in the beginning of 2022. On that context, this project´s focus is to investigate the FI present in the rural settlement Sustainable Development Project (SDP) Mario Lago, located in the Ribeirão Preto municipal area, in São Paulo. The sugested hypothesis is that, quite differently from the national reality, the collective and cooperative work, the agroecological production and the autoconsumption which caracterizes the researched settlement help to decrease settled rural families food and nutritional insecurity. Methodologically, the research is structured, beyond the bibliographical review, in field research with semistructured interviews, participant observation and secondary data analysis. Further more, through an adaptation to the local reality of the questionnaire which measures the Brazilian Scale of Food Insecurity (BSFI), we will seek a comparative analysis with other realities, notably those described on the inquiries of the Food and Nutritional Security Surveillance (FNSS) of the Sovereignity, Food and Nutritional Security Brazilian Research Network (SFNSBR). The objective is to shine a light about the succesful strategies of the farmers agricultural production and social reproduction and how it garanties food and nutritional security.