The production of family farming and the effects of incentive programs

Abstract

Two important incentive programs of Brazilian federal government for family farming development are the national program for the strengthening of family farming (Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar – PRONAF) and the national school feeding program (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar – PNAE). The PRONAF provides credit to promote the increase of production and investment, whereas the PNAE determines that 30% of the transfer for food acquisition to the public education network be expended on family farming products. The objective of this work was to analyze the effects and spatial distribution of these two programs on the gross production value of family farmers of the South region in 2017. The exploratory analysis of the spatial data showed that both programs exhibit a positive spatial autocorrelation. The spatial lags of the dependent variable and the errors were significant. The PNAE variable lag, together with the error model, shows that there are overflowing effects of the program on the neighbor municipalities. The PRONAF is significant in all models, which suggests its importance for family farming promotion.