Niederle, Paulo, et al. 2019. Narrative Disputes over Family-Farming Public Policies in Brazil: Conservative Attacks and Restricted Countermovements. Latin American Research Review 54(3), pp. 707–720. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.366 SOCIOLOGY Narrative Disputes over Family-Farming Public Policies in Brazil: Conservative Attacks and Restricted Countermovements Paulo Niederle1, Catia Grisa1, Everton Lazaretti Picolotto2 and Denis Soldera1 1 Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, BR 2 Federal University of Santa Maria, BR Corresponding author: Paulo Niederle (
[email protected]) This article analyzes the conservative narratives underlying current changes in Brazilian rural development public policies. It first presents an overview of the recognition and institutionalization of family farming and the main policies created in support of this segment. Subsequently, it discusses how a conservative narrative started to question the ability of these policies to integrate family farmers into modern agricultural markets. Focusing on how this narrative tries to legitimate a new “referential” for public action, the article analyzes the discourse on newly occurring segregation between agricultural policies for productive farmers and social policies for unproductive ones. It demonstrates how this discourse excludes family farmers from the social pact that prevailed over the past three decades and depended on the state as an actor to mediate the contradictions in the unstable coexistence of agribusiness and family-farming logics. Finally, it analyzes how rural social movements are reacting to this process. Este artigo analisa as narrativas conservadoras que sustentam as atuais mudanças nas políticas públicas de desenvolvimento rural no Brasil. Em primeiro lugar, analisa o processo de reconhecimento e institucionalização da agricultura familiar e das principais políticas criadas para este segmento.