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Les deux visages du Sertão

 | 
Marianne Cohen
, 
Ghislaine Duqué

Summary

Texte intégral

1Interdisciplinary research on the question of the fragility of small farmers in the face of drought was conducted in co-operation with Brazilian laboratories in one of the driest parts of the Nordeste region of Brazil, the Carirí de la Paraiba area. The term drought is understood here in the broad sense as a phenomenon that is not only climatic but an overall phenomenon with consequences for ecosystems, the use of resources, landholding concentration, social differentiation, etc. This definition of the subject calls for interdisciplinary work, breaking with the prevalent compartmentalisation between research in social science focusing on the social, economic and political determinants of smallholders on the one hand and naturalist and/or technical research focused on the ’naturel’ constraint of drought and the ’solutions’ put forward to overcome it on the other. Our initial hypothesis was that the natural and social causes of the vulnerability of small farmers acted together or even strengthened and interacted and that separating the two approaches would lead to a truncated perception of the reality of the situation. When the choice was made, this approach was innovative in the scientific field in Brazil, while combined approaches to ’fragile environments’ involving social sciences, technical sciences and natural sciences already existed in France (CNRS in the PIREN programme).

2This interdisciplinary approach is the subject of retrospective reflection tracing the difficulties of the undertaking. These result partly from the combining of sociology, anthropology, agronomy and biogeography and partly from the diversity of the scientific contexts in France and Brazil. The progress of the hinging between disciplines is shown to be a process combining the construction of problematics and the formulation of transverse questions and common hypotheses that were refined during the different research phases. This took place over an unusually long period of time (12 years!) and was performed at different spatial scales. It combined a comparatively short ecological and social reconnaissance phase at the regional scale and a long phase of monitoring and comparing two groups of small farmers.

3The field studies at regional scale made it possible to characterise the semi-arid context and its consequences for the soil and vegetation. The agrarian history of this region that was linked with the history of Brazil from a very early date is traced, together with the recent changing trends in regional agriculture. Analysis of the social representations related to droughts sheds different light on the ecological and social consequences of semi-aridity.

4Concentrating on three communes in this region, we worked on the joint definition of the spatial units characterised by ecological descriptors (vegetation, soil, forms of erosion), types of land use and the farming Systems associated with them. Floristic inventories and a diachronic study of aerial photographs showed the different types of caatingas, their biodiversity and the role of environmental conditions and human activities in this diversity and evolution. During reconnaissance of the region, a major opposition became visible between a traditional agri-pastoral system leading to degradation of the caatinga and a ’modernised’ System based on the irrigation of cash crops with, as the main result, the salinisation of water and soil, a duality explaining the title of this book.

5In order to deepen our understanding of these relations between ecological Systems and social Systems, we performed monitoring combining sociological surveys and ecological measurements for 12 years. This was applied to two contrasted groups of family farmers representing ’the two faces of the Sertão’:

  • in the hamlet of Ligeiro, small livestock farmers anchored in the traditional agri-pastoral system,
  • in the village of Ribeira, farmers who grow irrigated garlic, a good example of the modernisation of farming in the Nordeste using irrigation.

6Our first hypothesis was that interactions existed between these two farming strategies, their ecological consequences and the two groups’ representations of nature.

7In addition, these groups are organised as ’communities’ or ’associations’ assembling the different inhabitants of the two places and their relations. Our second hypothesis was that this social organisation was a great advantage that strengthened the ’résistance’ to drought of these small farmers.

8We aimed at performing an appraisal of the social and ecological dynamics and their meaning in the longer term with regard to the conservation of renewable resources and biodiversity and the reproduction of social groups.

9The Ligeiro community consists of a group of small livestock farmers who descended from a common ancestor The land ownership concentration trend accompanied by the enclosure of the caatinga—previously open to all—has led the ten families to using strategies that evolve in time; their common feature is the maintaining of animal farming, the symbol of a certain social status, combined with mixed farming.

10The result of this choice has been the strong mobilisation of common land for feeding herds and for wood supplies, leading to the degradation of the caatinga. In spite of this historical trend, the land used by these families has useful resources; we sought to inventory these and define their uses. The monitoring of pastoral resources revealed the strong vulnerability of livestock farming to climatic irregularity. The experiments—unfortunately on too short a time step— showed the potential of the caatinga for development as woodland closed to grazing. They also showed the existence of social regulation of over-grazing, with the better-off farmers moving their cattle to other land (owned or leased) in bad years, thus sustaining the group’s cohesion when faced with pressure from outside (neighbouring large landowners profit from droughts to buy the land owned by the farmers in delicate positions). Monitoring also covered agricultural activities complementing animal farming and which also vary (choice of crop, cultural practices) according to the climatic and/or socioeconomic context.

11The existence of a community structure initially enhanced by a development body strengthened solidarity in the group of ten families. The recent broadening of the community to include neighbours and relatives enables the identification of the group as a contact for local authorities and the envisaging of links within the framework of a broader social group. However, in spite of the group’s cohesion and ability to adapt, the long term balance shows that only a few children in each generation remain on the land, and the situation is still uncertain for today’s young people.

12The Ribeira garlic growers’ group is the illustration of a strategy of modernisation and intensification using irrigation encouraged by rural development policies for a number of years. The presence of a semi-perennial river enabled farmers to move towards irrigated production of garlic from the beginning of the twentieth century, a strategy that palliated the parcelling out of land. This ’tradition’ led to their being chosen by development and co-operation bodies, which set up a crop intensification programme at the end of the 1970s.

13However, water and soil salinity problems arose fairly quickly. The causes are complex and imbricated, with local over-exploitation of water resources, the sensitivity of certain soils and a decrease in water resources at drainage basin scale as a result of the construction of dams. In the long term, the continued growing of the crop leads to the chemical impoverishment of strategic land near the river, as has been shown in our monitoring operations.

14These ecological problems are made more acute by the limits of crop profitability, as family workers are underpaid, and by the oppressive tenant farming contracts that the owners of salinised land are obliged to accept. These repeated crises are allayed by migration to towns, pluri-activity and by the Ribeiro garlic planters’ association (ARPA) which, after actively participating in the intensification of the crop, is now seeking alternatives to garlic.

15This long-term interdisciplinary analysis of two contrasting cases makes it possible to measure the social and ecological consequences of farmers ’strategies and in particular to appraise the pertinence of our initial hypothesis, that is to say opposition between conservational management (by the livestock farmers) and predatory resource management (by the garlic growers). Beyond the question of differences in farming strategies, the two groups face the same problem related to the strong social inequalities with which Brazilian society is imbued, especially in the Nordeste region, the most underprivileged in the country. The representations of nature include in each group a measure of ambiguity between a dominating view of the action of man on nature, accompanied in Brazil by unlimited confidence in the infinity of natural resources and a view of moderate good use of nature. It is nonetheless true that certain links of solidarity between the members of the communities are disappearing with the trend towards cash crops and that the toughening of social relations has effects on the exploitation of natural resources, whose heritage dimensions is forgotten to a certain extent. The land ownership status of these resources and its role in the identity of social groups play a very important role in this process. However, some evolutions concerning resources are totally outside their control. This is the case of water resources in particular.

16Organisation as a community or association is an advantage in terms of social visibility but is not free of ambiguity (alliance with local powers, the emergence of more or less legitimate ’leading families’, etc.). Such organisation forms support for the construction, purchase or obtaining of a certain number of infrastructure facilities and equipment that no individual farmer would have been able to obtain for lack of guarantee in the form of land ownership.

17Access to certain development programmes is facilitated, even if their framework is often limited to the technical sphere. When development bodies focus on smallholders they propose ’technological packages’ whose economic, social and ecological sustainability is hardly checked. They are also imbued with certain prejudices with regard to the ’natural constraints’ of the region; nature seems to be viewed as an obstacle to development (e.g. ’solve the problem’ of drought by an irrigation-only policy or by channelling the São Francisco, the only perennial river in the region).

18Nevertheless, accompanying these communities shows that beyond the problems met there is real ecological and also human potential. The social groups possess knowledge about nature that has enabled them to remain on the land, without being opposed to progress—as development bodies readily believe—on condition that progress does not make them even more fragile...

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