Debatendo a agroecologia no semiárido brasileiro: uma análise a partir das experiências contidas na revista Agriculturas: experiências em agroecologia

Abstract

The Brazilian semiarid region has a territorial extension of 980,133.079 square kilometers and includes eight States in the Northeast (Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe) plus the North of Minas Gerais. It shows 56.46% of the territorial dimension and has 22,598,318 inhabitants (as synopsis of Census 2010), representing 11.85% of the population, according to the National Institute for the Semiarid - INSA (2012). The rural environment belonging to the Brazilian semiarid region goes through long drought periods, and those climatic difficulties faced end up instigating farmers to seek new productive alternatives that can be used to assist in the development process, to verify the characteristics, potential and existing resources in site and which could be adapted to the climate. Thus, agroecology arises, which seeks to use natural resources in an environmentally friendly manner so that you can achieve sustainability and productivity of production systems as a way to give opportunity and autonomy to farmers that, before, with the conventional model of agriculture, were excluded from the production process and who had no prospects to continue the rural environment. This paper presents a review of literature about how agroecology through their socio-productive practices constitutes a rural development process in the semiarid region through tools to combat poverty and social inequality, improving the quality of life of farmers from ecological principles and organization of socioproductive systems that contribute to the socio-economic improvement of the country people and contribute in the development process of rural communities. To prepare this work a comprehensive literature review was conducted to know under the gaze of the Journal Agricultures: Experiences in Agroecology which is published by ASPTA - Advisory Services for Projects in Alternative Agriculture in partnership with ILEIA Foundation - Centre of Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture, as well as articles and websites related to the topic. Therefore, the agroecological paradigm relates scientific knowledge with traditional knowledge and experiences of farmers, knowledge able to establish strategies to build and strengthen agricultural systems and rural development. Finally, the agroecology aims through the relationship between the knowledge and experience to intervene and collaborate in promoting social transformations required to generate more sustainable production and consumption patterns, enabling the construction of a development process as the particularities of rural semiarid region.