"It doesn't matter being good and beautiful but not producing": animal breeding and economic rationalization in a dairy-producing cooperative in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

• Grant number: 23/03345-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: November 01, 2023
• End date: July 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Felipe Ferreira Vander Velden
• Grantee: Leandra Holz
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project intends to investigate how the relations between humans and animals are impacted by the so-called rationalization processes that are becoming increasingly present among dairy-producing families associated with a cooperative in the southern region of Brazil. Its purpose is to think about what has been changing in the relations between humans and cows with the introduction of techniques and rationalization processes linked to an idea of success, whose main change is the implementation of production methods and the creation of dairy cows in confinement.This process marks the replacement of a traditional system of pasture raising, in whichthe cows lived loose in the fields, with a modern shed where the animals are kept in a covered, delimited and air-conditioned space. What changes, therefore, in the ways in which humans and cattle interact? How do animals come to be perceived and handled by breeders? What does the idea of success mean from the point of view of the relationship between humans and cows and the perception and treatment of the latter? The research will be carried out through an ethnography with families associated with the Cooperativa Mista de Pequenos Agricultores da Região Sul Ltda. (Coopar), locatedin the city of São Lourenço do Sul, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.