PRONAF’s costing of plantation in the Brazilian Northeast region

behavior of financed products in the 2013-2021 period

Abstract

Family farming has been gaining a new look since the 1990’s. A look that has sought to characterize it in a positive way, that is, to characterize it by what it ́s; and no longer define it in a negative way, that is, by what it ́s not, as if it were the destiny of family agriculture to become a great monocultural production. Thus, family farming began to be associated, among other factors, with food production; and has received its own rural credit policy, the Pronaf. However, there are questions about the capacity of Pronaf to meet the regional diversity of family agriculture and, above all, about the concentration of its resources in crops that reproduce the model of productive specialization associated with crops for export. In this sense, our article seeks to observe whether, for the case of the Northeast region, Pronaf has financed crops linked to local food, usually associated with diversified production. To this end, we analyzed the data of the agricultural costing credit for crops granted through Pronaf during the period from 2013 to 2021 for the Northeast region. We conclude that, although there is a diversity of crops financed by Pronaf in the Northeast, the growing participation of corn cultivation in the total resources requires attention.