The role of the city at the family agriculture in the semiarid: the example of the submedium São Francisco

Abstract

The development of irrigated agriculture in the semiarid regions was designed as an alternative to prevent the rural exodus towards the major Brazilian cities. However, little is known about its impact on familiar agriculture. We conducted interviews with twenty-five heads of households living in the region of Curaçá (BA), in order to analyze the agrarian history, the mobility patterns and the seed exhange networks. The production in the region was based on the complementariy between the river margins and the dry hinterlands (caatinga). The construction of the Sobradinho dam contributed to dismantle this system, giving new importance to regional cities in local livelihoods. Today, the rural-urban multi-sited households are a way to maintain familiar production systems in this semi-arid region. However, we warn about the risks of food security loss, since farmers tend to rely on a restricted range of cultivated varieties , mainly obtained in the shops of the neighboring towns.