Manejo da terra e fogo acidental na Amazônia brasileira: uma análise sob a perspectiva da Unidade Produtiva Camponesa

Abstract

Fire is a constant in rural areas throughout the Brazilian Amazon, both as intentional burning and accidental fires, which entails a constant threat to human survival and the integrity of forests. The human activity of opening up the agricultural frontier in this region, characterized by the predominance of extensive systems of land management, consists in the main source of ignition of accidental fires. The phenomenon called fire contagion occurs when fire escapes out of human control and reaches neighboring areas of forests and rural productive units. The main objective of this work is to present a theoretical-methodological framework that adequately addresses the behavior of peasants of the Brazilian Amazon, more specifically with regard to their decision-making process of land management for production, as regards to fire use as an agricultural technique, as well as their reactions to the fire contagion in their units. The model of reproductive efficiency of Costa and the field theory of Bourdieu are taken as theoretical-methodological references. The subfield of peasant production in the Brazilian Amazon hosts the field work for primary data collection of peasants settled along the federal highway Cuiabá - Santarém, known as the BR-163 Corridor, covering areas of the territories of the Brazilian States of Pará and Mato Grosso. Statistical techniques, such as regression with dummy variables, tests based on Chi-square statistics and logistic modeling supported the individual and joint analyzes of the determinants, empirically identified as explanatory variables of peasant behavioral decision making for fire use and their reactions to fire contagion. The results on both subjects (use of fire and accidental fire) confirm the guiding hypothesis of the present work, which claims that that peasant behavior, as a decision maker of the productive unit is constantly influenced by the sociocultural and institutional environment, without however ignore their specificities as peasant units.