Educação cooperativista e a sucessão familiar: um estudo de caso no Oeste de Santa Catarina

Abstract

Family succession is essential for the development of small municipalities where agricultural activities have great economic importance. The lack of family succession can compromise food production and, consequently, the sustainability of cooperatives that have their productive base constituted by family agriculture. Therefore, many cooperatives develop educational programs with a focus on the formation of new leaders and the permanence of young people in the field. The objective of this work is to identify the impact of a cooperative education program, aimed at training young farmers, children of associates, on family succession in the Western region of Santa Catarina. Data collection was performed with the application of two online questionnaires, directed to two groups of young children of farmers living in the study region. The first group consists of young associates and/or children of associates, formed by the training course of young leaders in the classes of the years 2014 and 2018, offered by an agro-industrial cooperative with branches installed in the study region. The second group consists of young people who have ties to the cooperative, but did not participate in the training course of young leaders. The results obtained do not allow identifying the contribution of the training course of young leaders on the succession of young people in the studied region. It was found that the participation of women is relatively low (average of 30%) among young people who took or did not take the training course offered by the cooperative. And that the majority of the young people studied (75% in both groups) intend to succeed parents in the management of rural property