Social capital and dilemmas of collective action: evaluating the results of a community production center facing family farmers set up in a settlement in Mato Grosso do Sul

Abstract

This paper discusses the problems related to collective action and cooperation between family farmers, milk producers is based on data from a Community Production Center – CCP set up in a settlement of the Brazilian National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform – Incra. The empirical locus of the investigation was the Settlement Itamarati II, in the municipality of Ponta Pora-MS. Through research instruments used to collect qualitative and quantitative data, we found that, despite the income increase obtained with the processing and collective marketing of the main product of these families, local community characteristics related to low levels of social capital, determine impediments to closer cooperation among families. This configuration ends up generating a situation where the farmers do not develop inter-subjective trust chains and begin to act as individual milk suppliers to the undertaking which built collectively. The conclusions seek to explain analytically which social variables that explain this conformation.