Map will include cooperatives in the Biodiesel Program

The Secretary of Family Agriculture and Cooperatives of the Ministry of Agriculture (Mapa), Fernando Schwanke, assured that Minister Tereza Cristina should soon forward new regulations for cooperatives in the Biodiesel Program, respecting the proportion of family farmers in their staff. Currently, cooperatives that have less than 60% of their members classified as family farmers are completely outside the program and the objective is that all dapian producers (those who have DAP) can benefit from the program. The statement was given during a panel on Thursday night (06/06) during the 1st Day of the Cooperative Technical Network (RTC), in Gramado (RS). “This is an old claim from the cooperative sector”, he reinforced. 

Schwanke also informed that an adjustment should come out within 15 days that will allow central cooperatives, such as CCGL, to also access Family Farming programs, as long as they reach the proportion of farmers with a family farming declaration, which will be the same required of individual cooperatives. Currently, central cooperatives can only have legal DAP if 100% of members are qualified, which makes this access practically unattainable. “The technical note is already being made”, he informed.

According to Schwanke, another project under construction with the Ministry of Agriculture is Intercooperation, which consists of joining efforts and encouraging collaboration between cooperatives from the South to the North of Brazil. The project will be implemented with support from the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB) and will have resources from Mapa to pay for training travel across the country. Schwanke informs that the goal is to put the program into operation in the second half of this year and that hiring those interested in providing this training service will be done through public notices. “The ministry will support the project by paying daily expenses, tickets in a method that is still being built”. With this, it is expected to bring the expertise of already consolidated ones to new projects. “We want an exchange of good cooperative practices,” he said.

Regarding the project to integrate the technical areas of cooperatives in Rio Grande do Sul proposed by RTC and presented in Gramado, he said it was an interesting action to be analyzed with the aim of creating new systems for providing technical assistance services in the country. “Today, public technical assistance serves only 20% of producers. Either we find other models or many people will end up leaving the activity due to the lack of this service”, he highlighted. When talking about the 2019/2020 Harvest Plan, he guaranteed a focus on medium-sized rural producers, a segment that, according to him, is a production gap that we have had for years, which concentrates 20% of the country's cultivated area and needs attention. The contribution of resources for the next harvest should be announced in the coming weeks.

The panel also included the president of the Parliamentary Front to Support Cooperatives of RS (Frencoop/RS), deputy Elton Weber, who, representing the Legislative Assembly, highlighted the relevance of greater participation of the cooperative sector in national politics. “We have to talk about politics because the pillar of development is cooperativism. I do not believe that society can be built without participation. This meeting here today is cooperative politics”, said the parliamentarian whose origins are linked to the movement and family farming. Weber highlighted the need for structural reforms such as Social Security, but warned that the Bolsonaro government's initial project needs to be discussed and improved. “We need to have the debate. The reform needs to happen and be voted on this year, but we need to calibrate this issue. And that is doing politics.” The action of cooperative leaders on the national scene also set the tone for the speech by the president of the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB), Márcio Lopes de Freitas, who recalled his first attempts to bring politics into the debates of the cooperative sector, when it was still worked alongside his father. “I convinced my father that it was not a question of having ideology in the cooperative, but of helping to have representatives working for the sector,” he said, remembering that Brazil has 7,8 cooperatives that earn R$450 billion a year. “We are an economic mass and a fundamental social mass. We cannot afford not to have political representation and seek our rights.”

Mediating the table, the president of the CCGL, Caio Vianna, reinforced that the productive sector needs support from public policies that facilitate the activity of the private sector, and not the other way around, with actions that come to bureaucratize, hinder and delay the investments that the The country needs it so much, but it also has the duty to fulfill its role in the sectors that are originally within its competence, such as education, public security and health. “Sometimes we think that everything depends on the government, but here we realize that there is still a lot to do within the gate, a lot to do after the gate, to evolve in our cooperatives, but always thinking about systemic growth. The public authorities have to allow us to carry out our projects”, he highlighted. Vianna also cited the high taxation imposed on the sector and the lack of investments in infrastructure or deregulation for the private sector to allow rural producers to sell their production efficiently and profitably.