Stênio Ribeiro
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - Approximately 86% of the jobs made available between January and July in the Brazilian agricultural sector were in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. This statistic was furnished by the University of São Paulo's (USP) Center of Advanced Studies in Applied Economics (Cepea).

According to Luciano Marcos de Carvalho, an adviser with the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture (CNA), this is so because the cultivation of coffee and sugar cane is concentrated in these states. These are agricultural activities that require large quantities of permanent workers, says the secretary of Production and Agroenergy of the Ministry of Agriculture, Linneu Costa Lima. "Jobs are not lacking in these areas," he guarantees.

Carvalho recalls that agriculture is responsible for a sizeable portion of rural job offers during the first half of the year, which is when most crops are harvested. However, fewer new jobs were generated this year, due to droughts that caused big losses in the production of soybeans, corn, rice, cotton, and wheat.

The concern now, he notes, is directed at the performance of the sector in the growing year that is just getting underway and for which the government has announced financial resources totaling US$ 23.259 billion (R$ 53.35 billion), US$ 19.335 billion (R$ 44.35 billion) of which is for commercial farming and US$ 3.923 billion (R$ 9 billion), for family farming.

According to Carvalho, everything will depend upon the frame of mind of the farmers, who lost income by being forced to sell crops at cheaper prices and, to boot, had to renegotiate part of their overdue debt, postponing repayment until March-April of next year. All of this contributes to uncertainties that may also prompt the use of less technology in the 2005/06 growing year and once again affect the generation of employment in the countryside, he argued.

Translation: David Silberstein