Evolution of the connections between production and consumption and its impacts on the dynamics of a territory: the case of Mocajuba in the eastern Amazon – PA

Abstract

With the elongation of the food chains, the global food system generates a distance between farmers and consumers. In front of this global conjuncture, local resistance movements are proposing initiatives of rapprochement between farmers and society. The objective of this work is to analyze the evolution of these processes of disconnection and reconnection between production and consumption, as well as the territorial reconfigurations provoked by these movements in the last decades in the municipality Mocajuba (PA) in the Eastern Amazon. To reach this goal, an analysis of the flows of agricultural and food products between the municipality and abroad and within the municipality was carried out, complemented by an analysis of the trajectory of the territory in the last decades and the current local development projects. There was a significant increase in the flow of agro-industrial products from outside the municipality from the years 2000-2005 and that have arrived reaching very strongly in the rural areas, allowed by the social programs that raised the income of the population. This is reflected in a growing dependency on these rural areas for new food products and in a marginalization of more isolated areas with less access to these products. However, there were movements of valorization of Amazonian food products, cassava flour and açaí, which allows rural areas not to be totally dependent or excluded from global dynamics. More recently, initiatives for rapprochement between producers and consumers in Mocajuba are being carried out, tending to boost rural areas.