A agricultura familiar e geração de novidades no contexto da pandemia da Covid-19: o feirão colonial de Santa Maria-RS

Abstract

The generation of novelties in family farming occurs to improve or solve social or economic problems faced by farmers. The production of novelties involves a process that seeks to create and/or invent new ways of performing farmers' daily tasks. Family farming has been adapting and inducing changes that are often not considered significant in the global context, but which in its family (micro-social) context make a difference, and it is in times of crisis that this political category (family farming) shows its resilience and reinvents itself. With the arrival of the pandemic in 2020, family farmers suffered economic impacts due to the social isolation established to contain the spread of the new coronavirus and avoid the collapse of the health system. This dissertation identifies novelties in marketing-generated by family farmers in Feirão Colonial as resilience strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic. The case of the family farmers of Feirão Colonial, organized collectively based on the principles of solidarity economy, was analyzed. Initially, an approach was made with the market traders, making the first observations from the perspective of participant observation, which allowed choosing the sample of eight family farmers who were promoting innovations in marketing, dissemination, and generation of new products. After the delimitation and identification of the marketers, semi-structured interviews were conducted. It is concluded that with the arrival of the pandemic, the drop in sales was 30% and 60% among the group surveyed. Thus, farmers had to reinvent themselves and create new strategies to sell. Thus, some social networks and messaging devices that before the pandemic was not widely exploited for these purposes, began to be used for the dissemination and marketing of products. The strategies generated by farmers occurred through the dissemination of their products in digital media such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, the construction of websites, and also the dissemination of products and promotions on local radios. The novelties generated in the context of the Colonial Farm Fair point to some activated "forces" that may have been facilitators of the construction of "new things", such as access to information, training, social organization, and technical guidance. The space of the Colonial Farm constitutes an important place for the exchange of experiences, formation, and training of the subjects. The participation of several teaching, research, and extension institutions has made possible the formation of awareness and autonomy for decision-making. Thus, the result of the interactions between the groups that share the same space ends up promoting motivations to generate novelties. Another important element is the projection of the HOPE/CO HOPE project through FEICOOP, which can be considered a "force", where the experiences of the training days and the Virtual Fair have thrown important seeds and challenges for the introduction of farmers in the universe of e-commerce.