Potential contribution of araucaria forests for the sustainability of the familial agriculture in South-Central Parana

Abstract

The degradation of woodlands is a relentless and virtually unavoidable process, considering our current patterns of sustainability. The familial farmers find themselves in a double pressure situation: on the one hand, they must obey the environmental law, preserving the legally protected woodlands, but, on the other hand, they have to produce food and crops in order to provide sustenance for their families and guarantee the maintenance of their lands. This paper treats about familial farmers, especially from the point of view of economic and environmental sustainability. Therefore, it approaches some questions related to sustainable development and to the views that both environmental and ecological economy have on natural resources; related to the worldwide conventions that aim to mitigate the harmful effects of the global warming; and it also performs an analysis of the profitability of the rational use of Legal Forest Reservs, by means of the introduction of Araucaria angustifolia, aiming to the production of pine nuts and the forest carbon sequestration, as a way to contribute to the economic and environmental sustainability of the small farmers’ lands in South-Central Parana State. The results found show that the proposed project improves the economic and environmental sustainability in the familial farmers’ producing units, since it increases the profits per hectare in about 2.5 times, if compared with the incomes obtained by bean crops – a typical produce from the familial agriculture in that region –, as analyzed from the available informations, besides raising a favourable impact on the natural environment.