FOOD SAFETY: THE REALITY OF FAMILY FARMERS IN THE MUNICIPALITY
OF ITAPURANGA GOIÁS
Waltuir Batista Machado (Alfredo Nasser Faculty – UNIFAN/ICSA)
Odilon José de Oliveira Neto (Federal University of Uberlândia UFU/FACIP)
Keywords:
Food Security, Family Farming, Farm and Agricultural Financing income.
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Introduction
The Family Agriculture represents 84.4% of the total enterprises in agricultural production,
which use 21% of the arable land, employ somewhere around 13 million workers in the field,
accounting for 60% of the food consumed in the country, and 75 % of jobs in the field are
from family farms and employing an average of 15 persons per hundred hectares (IBGE,
2006).
The given importance of representative numbers of family farming in the context of the
Brazilian economy, which according Buainain (2006), about 40% of the gross value of
agricultural production is generated by family farmers.
Even so, there are producers inserted in poverty that is established in rural areas which creates
the need for assessment of farmers from the perspective of food security.
Therefore, this study aims to assess the food security s of the farmers in the municipality of
Itapuranga-Goiás.
This study raises the following question: What is the relationship of the variables as tenure,
farm size, income and agricultural finance, education of household head and participation in
the organized and the food (in) security of the family farmers in the area searched?
The universe of empirical research is family farmers in the municipality of Itapuranga - Goiás,
where the representation of family farming is more than 80% of farms (IBGE 2006).
The presented results aim to contribute to the assessment of food security of farmers
and also other perspectives such as academic and scientific knowledge generating,
as well as improvement of public policies for family farming.
Graph 2-Food security condition according to the ​property area
Methodological Procedures
Initially a theoretical foundation was performed through a bibliographic research, supporting
in specialized works on food security and family farming, and then a field survey was
conducted that would allow the verification of the relationship among food security and land
tenure variables, farm size, farm income and education of the producer of the survey area.
Graph 4 - Food security condition according to the agricultural income
The survey was conducted in the municipality of Itapuranga, State of Goiás, from period
January to March 2013. Family farmers participated and were classified as food secure
and insecure. The interviews were conducted in loco and the definition of household
was randomly.
The calculation was made with the value determined by confidence level of 90%, the
sampling error of 5%, p =0.85and q =0.15. Thus it was obtained a sample of 138 families.
To diagnose the relationship among the variables and food security of farmers, the technique
for comparison analysis and investigation groups of frequencies were performed, based on the
data collected. The data were sorted in Microsoft Excel tables and tabulated by the Statistical
Package for Social Sciences(SPSS).
Comparison of farmers included in the groups with food security and food insecurity and it
was assessed according to the variables tenure, farm size, farm income, agricultural finance,
education of household head and participation in organized segments, making clear the
condition of food (in)security of the farmers in the area.
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Graph 1- Food security condition according to tenure
Graph 6 - Education of farmers according to food safety.
Final Thoughts
This work was based on the perception of the security and insecurity food of the
farmers; based on analysis of the variables land tenure, farm size, farm income,
agricultural finance, and education of household head.
At the beginning of this work the following question was raised: What is the
relationship of the variables tenure, farm size, income and agricultural finance,
education of household head and participation in the organized segments and the
condition of food (in)security of small farmers in researched area?
Among the items discussed, farm size, farm income and participation in associations
and cooperatives, significant results were shown in comparative terms between security
food and insecurity food, indicating the existence of a relationship among these
variables and food security of small farmers in the studied region.
Also according to the analyzed variables, land tenure, agricultural finance through the
National Program for strengthening family farming and education of household head, no
significant result were shown in relation to food security of local producers searched,
suggesting no existence of a relationship among these variables and food security of the
farmers surveyed.
According to the report from the perspective of food security, it was found that 62.3% of
family farmers are in a condition of food security against a percentage of 37.7% of those
who are food insecure which in general indicates that farmers in the studied region need
improvement in food security, but they are in a good standing.
According to the results of the research, the study was successful to evaluate the food
security of the farmers in the municipality of Itapuranga-Goiás.