Ariana Dantas
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - In the first half of this year, the National Program for the Strengthening of Family Farming (Pronaf) provided loans through the Bank of the Northeast (BNB) to over 195 thousand families, affirms the manager in charge of Pronaf activities in the Ministry of Agrarian Development, Luiz Sérgio Farias Machado. In an interview on National AM Radio, he said that one of the concerns of the program is to make it easier for family farmers to obtain credit.

"We have adopted various procedures to make obtaining credit less bureaucratic," Machado said. According to him, to complete a credit application with the bank and obtain a loan, all that a farmer has to present is a aptitude declaration [furnished by various governmental and associational organs] and an ID. Machado claims that the program will "generate income and employment to improve the farmer's living standards and enable him to repay the bank."

Machado affirmed that resources on the order of US$ 206.8 million (R$ 480 million) are expected to be distributed to over 350 thousand family farmers in the Northeast region by the end of this year. He says that the reason for this figure is that the current administration of the BNB has assigned priority to serving family farmers through this type of loan.

The Pronaf manager also explained that the program has various credit categories. In the case of category A, farmers are eligible to receive up to US$ 7.75 thousand (R$ 18 thousand) from the bank, if they are family farmers who live in agrarian reform settlements. Pronaf B provides US$ 1.29 thousand (R$ 3 thousand) to farmers with an annual gross income of up to US$ 861 (R$ 2 thousand). The other categories can borrow, on average, US$ 6.46 thousand (R$ 15 thousand).

Translation: David Silberstein