Family farmers and the characteristics of the decision-making process: the case of winemakers linving in Flores da Cunha – RS - Brazil

Abstract

In the face of the constant development of Brazilian wine market, Gauchos producers have been organizing to provide the demands on the volume and quality of final product commercialized. Especially, these economic agents confront challenges inherent in agribusiness, such as the difficulty of access to information and opportunistic behavior from transactional partners. Therefore, the study aims to understand the decision-making process of the family farmers that produce grapes in the mountainous region of Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil, as a function of socioeconomic scenario of the production chain and the efficiency of production units. To this end, information was collected on existing studies about the production chain and interviews were conducted with eleven producers living in Flores da Cunha city. It is emphasized that the process of decision making of economic agents is conducted in the collective of the family, more focused on everyday issues. However, prevailing the peculiarities of limited rationality of economic agents. Therefore, always oriented to the achievement of greater efficiency of the productive activity and social welfare of the family, the decisions reflect the broad range of objective and subjective aspects surrounding farmers, in accordance with the technical and economic performances and between production systems that compose the rural property.