Agri-Food Policies and Family Farms’ Commercialization: Insights from Brazil

Brazil is one of the main agricultural producers in the world, and its agri-food system has been experiencing concentration and intensification. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Brazilian government has implemented different interventions to support family agriculture, such as the National Programme for Strengthening Family Farming (PRONAF), the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Programme (ATER), and different seed distribution programs. Despite the social and economic relevance of these programs, there is a lack of quantitative studies investigating their impact on the resilience of family farms, primarily the promotion of commercialization. We aim to fill this gap by applying propensity score matching techniques to household-level data from the 2014 Brazilian National Household Sample Survey. Only this survey has recorded this type of information to date. We compare the commercialization behavior of policy recipients with that of non-recipients, accounting for interaction effects between different policies. Our results show that PRONAF has had a significant positive impact on family farmers’ propensity to engage in commercialization, and the effect increases if they also have access to technical assistance. Technical assistance alone has a positive effect, while seed distribution appears not to make a significant difference. Our results suggest that an appropriate policy mix can increase the resilience of family farms in emerging countries.