An increasing number of rural members have left agriculture as the primary source of occupation and income, which coincides with the emergence of nonfarm activities in rural areas. According to Del Grossi (1999), between 1981 and 1995, the non-agricultural economically active population showed strong growth. The number of people occupied exclusively in agriculture decreased in all Brazilian regions. Since then, the more than proportional increase in the number of persons employed in nonfarm activities contributed to the rural population’s relative stabilization. Thus, numerous other activities emerged, being responsible for most jobs, especially in the regions with more modern agriculture, which implies that it is no longer possible to consider the rural only from the families and the agricultural activities.

The growth of the rural population employed in non-agricultural activities was initially observed in developed regions (Anderson & Leiserson, 1978; Fuller, 1990; Arkleton Trust, 1992; Hill, 1999; Van Der Ploeg et al., 2000; Ellis & Biggs, 2001; Terluin, 2003; Irwin et al., 2010; Chase, 2010; Zakeviciute, 2019). One main recommendation of these studies is that public policies for rural areas would consider the diversity of activities in these areas, rather than focusing exclusively on the farming activities (Ellis, 1998, 2000; Schejtman & Berdegué, 2004). This debate was also present in Latin American countries (Grammont & Martinez Valle, 2009).

The configuration of such new dynamics has reflected, particularly, on the number of families residing in rural areas and, consequently, in the rural exodus mitigation observed in the 1960s and 1970s. The number of rural households grew significantly from the 1990s, due to the growth in non-farming and multiactive families and non-occupied persons, with relative stabilization from 2004 to 2014 (Laurenti, 2014; Maia, 2014; Del Grossi, 2017). However, the rural population occupied in agricultural activities exclusively continued to decrease throughout this period.

According to Kageyama (2008), this new context formation closely relates to new rural roles. Among the new functions we highlight: the productive function, which, previously restricted to agriculture, is integrated by a set of non-agricultural activities, especially rural agro-industries, handicrafts, tourism, environmental conservation, which become responsible for a significant share of employment in these areas; the population function, as the rural area also becomes a place of residence for families not dedicated exclusively to agricultural activities; the environmental function, which demands from rural families the preservation of the environment and forest assets and that, in many cases, becomes an opportunity for occupation and income generation.

The rise of non-agricultural activities as a source of occupation and income has led to new lifestyles in rural areas, reflected in the substantial economic, social, and cultural diversity. Many families started to combine agricultural and non-agricultural activities among their members to diversify their occupation and income portfolio, contributing to the emergence of multiactivity within rural families. Income diversification and stabilization, in addition to the containment of the rural exodus, are pointed out as the main advantages of the heterogeneity that came to develop in the rural environment, especially among the most impoverished family farmers (Nascimento, 2009; Schneider, 2009; Escher et al., 2014).

Within family farming, these transformations have been visible through the different family types and groups that emerge in the new rural landscape and the reproduction strategies adopted by family groups. Del Grossi (2017) shows that the number of families in family farming in Brazil, between 2004 and 2014, remained stable due to the strong growth in the number of families dedicated to subsistence agriculture as compared to the reduction in the number of families conducting commercial production. In regional terms, the Northeast Region saw the most significant growth in families with activities focused on subsistence agriculture. Still, there was also a positive evolution in the North and South regions of the country.

Grisa et al. (2010), define subsistence agriculture as a diversification strategy used by family units to guarantee minimum conditions required for their socio-economic reproduction, especially regarding food autonomy. In addition to its role in generating food and diversifying their livelihoods, the authors point out that subsistence agriculture works as a kind of “non-monetary income” by enabling families to save resources producing goods in the family unit instead of acquiring them in the (super)market.

According to Neder (2008), between 1995 and 2006, there was high participation of rural people in family agriculture for subsistence, especially women, spouses, with few hours worked. The explanations for the growth in subsistence agriculture among rural families are the most diverse. According to Buainain and Dedecca (2010), besides income transfers, such as Bolsa Família and rural social security, the policies to incentivize family production would generate a kind of “opportunity cost” of working in agriculture. Family members who benefit from these policies and programs would be less willing to work in temporary and low-paid jobs.

Notwithstanding the authors above’ considerations on development conditions of subsistence agriculture, Schneider and Cassol (2014) show that family farming in Brazil is quite diverse and heterogeneous. According to the authors, family farming comprises at least three groups: the first group, highly specialized, has a large portion of the revenues generated in the economic activities related to agriculture; the families in the second group have multiple sources of income, mostly from nonfarm activities and pensions; in the third group, families obtain revenues mainly from nonfarm activities and carry out sporadic agricultural activities.

Family farming is historically characterized by its internal diversification, especially concerning its economic and productive aspects. Nonetheless, family farming still lacks yet specific policies for each segment. Multiactivity has presumably a vital role in the lowest segment by providing the strengthening and diversification of income sources. However, this group of more impoverished farmers would fundamentally depend on public policies that value the diversity of family demands and potentialize farm and nonfarm activities (Kageyama, 2001; Mattei, 1999; Schneider, 2009; Sacco dos Anjos, 2003; Nascimento, 2008; Cardoso, 2013; Delgado & Bergamasco, 2017).

Some authors argue that the model of agricultural development adopted in Brazil has fostered the large agricultural properties, while leaving a large group of impoverished smallholder family farmers unattended by the public policies (Grisa & Schneider, 2014). Nonetheless, the number of family farms in Brazil is still remarkable. At the same time, this group requires more equitable and differentiated public policies, especially in the sense of valuing the diversity and heterogeneity typical to their composition.

The creation of the National Program for Strengthening Family Farming [PRONAF] in 1995 reflects part of the protagonism assumed by social movements and organizations in family farming in seeking a more inclusive development model. The discussions that emerged in the academic and political spheres of that period, which strongly emphasized the importance of family farming for the Brazilian economy, also contributed to critical institutional changes (Delgado & Bergamasco, 2017).

According to Wanderley (2017), PRONAF represented, in fact, a significant advance for family farming in terms of public policy. However, the institutional change did not mean structural changes from the model of agricultural development based on large farms, nor did it have an equal reach for all farmers. The policies remain, according to the author, linked “to a model of agriculture with a certain degree of productivist rationality and participation in the market […]” (p. 71).

From this same perspective, Aquino et al. (2018), reinforce that PRONAF, created to reach all family farmers, regardless of their technical and economic condition, has frequently reproduced the same patterns of modernization process in agriculture. As a result, there has been an intensification of inequality within family farming itself, as one group has material conditions and a considerable standard of living. In contrast, another segment has precarious survival conditions, making them dependent on public policies.

The core of the matter is that, over the years, while recognizing the heterogeneity of ways of life within family farming itself, the various attempts to reduce inequalities by “including” the most varied types of family farmers, such as PRONAF, were successful only in relative terms. That is because there is a clear tendency to benefit the most dynamic and modern segment to the detriment of the more underdeveloped segment, thus reproducing the same patterns observed in the agricultural modernization. With some frequency, one discusses if the most impoverished family farming would result from the public policies that unintendedly weaken it instead of strengthening it (Carneiro, 1997; Nascimento, 2008; Aquino & Schneider, 2011; Aquino et al., 2018).

Law 11, 326/2006, regulated by Decree 9,064/2017, establishes the foundations of the national policy for this category of family farming. Nonetheless, the Law put into question the effectiveness of public policies to include historically marginalized family farms. Besides excluding several farmers from the policies’ coverage, the regulations mentioned above impose limits on family farming to become multiactive. The Law requires that at least half of the family farm’s income comes from economic activities. The limitation of this criterion stems from the fact that in intersectoral (and traditional) multiactivity, the revenue generated outside the family unit is higher than that earned internally.

Accordingly, those not complying with this criterion (and with the other criteria) are considered as non-family farmers and are, therefore, excluded from actions aimed at strengthening family farming. Many family farmers will fall under this situation not because nonfarm income (or farm income generated at another farm) is necessarily high, but because it the agricultural income generated by thes farmers is meager.

Possibly, the decreased number of family farms, from 4,300,000 to 3,900,000 units (presented by data from the 2017 Census of Agriculture) could be explained, in part, by the exclusion of many multiactive families with higher nonfarm incomes than farm incomes. These families are classified as non-family farming because they do not meet the Law’s criteria, thus being excluded from the public policy scope.

In a way, the definition provided by Act 11, 326/2006 does not match the diversity of the dynamics of Brazilian agriculture in recent years, widely discussed in the literature, in which the various sources of occupation and income would have a fundamental role in improving the families’ living conditions. According to Delgado and Bergamasco (2017), the legal recognition of family farming strengthens this category that has been historically excluded from public policies in Brazil. Still, it ignores a significant portion of new players that emerged from the “new” Brazilian rurality, such as hired employees in nonfarm activities.

We use microdata from PNAD of the IBGE for the seven states from the North Region in Brazil: Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins. We restricted our analysis to period 2006-2015 for two main reasons. First, our analysis starts in 2006, when the Family Farming Act came into force in Brazil (IBGE, 2015). Second, PNAD (IBGE, 2015), introduced several methodological changes after 2015, which might compromise our historical comparison.

We identified the types of families that meet (and others that do not) the criteria of Family Farming Act 11,326 dated July 24, 2006, regulated by Decree 9,064 dated May 31, 2017. The Family Farming Act defines the following criteria for classifying the family farmer:

Art. 3 the UFPA [Agricultural Production Family Unit] and the family farming enterprise must comply with the following requirements:

I - having, in any capacity, an area of up to four fiscal modules;

II - using at least half of the family workforce in the production and income generation process;

III - earning at least half of the family income from economic activities in their farm or enterprise; and

IV - the farm or enterprise being strictly family-led.

PNAD, unfortunately, has no information about who manages the farm. However, we believe that it is unlikely that a self-employed family will hire an administrator. As self-employed families correspond to practically 98% of the total Family Farming (the rest are families of employers with up to two employees), we understand that the lack of this information in the PNAD (enterprise management) does not preclude the investigation proposed here.

Thus, we defined the types of family farms based only on Criteria I, II, and III. Two essential precautions have also become imperative concerning the incomes earned by the members of the family units:

1) We considered incomes from wages earned in agriculture by family members from the Family Farming group (mostly self-employed, traditional multiactive families) as incomes obtained outside the farm; and

We considered as family farming only (i) the extended families of employers with up to 2 employees, and (ii) the self-employed families in which both family types met, simultaneously, the three previously mentioned criteria (I, II, and III). The types of families are:

1) Non-family farms of employers have an employer in the family and hires any number of employees (one or more) and that, also, either have their farms with more than four fiscal modules or, even having up to four fiscal modules, do not meet at least one of the other two Criteria (II, III) of the Act of 2006 and Decree of 2017. Therefore, this is a non-family type of family (or farm);

We also subdivided the family farms (group 3) according to the type of activities they develop (farm, nonfarm, and multiactive):

a) Family farming with commercial production has at least one member occupied in agriculture, conducting one or more agricultural enterprises;

We use exponential functions to identify trends in the types of families. Initially, weassumed that expected population of each family type 𝑘 in the year 𝑡 is given by:

Where 𝑌_𝑘𝑡 is the population of family type 𝑘 in year 𝑡, 𝜑_𝑘 is the expected value when 𝑡 =0, and 𝜃 is the annual growth rate of 𝑌_𝑘. Equation (1) can also be represented by:

Where 𝜀 is the random error not explained by the model. The average percentage rate of annual growth is given by ( 𝑒^𝜃𝑘^𝑡−1 )×100.

We introduced a binary variable 𝑑 in equation (2), which assumes 0 between years 2006–2009 and 1 between 2011–2015. This variable controls structural breaks in the annualgrowth trend due to changes in rural areas’ delimitation. The municipal government maymodify the urban perimeters in their respective municipalities, which consequentlychanges the number of rural residents. IBGE updates the rural areas in the DemographicCensuses, which, in our case, occurred in 2010. The equation will then be given by:

The rural families in the Brazilian North Region, more recently incorporated into the agricultural frontier, have shown relevant structural changes. First, we highlight the remarkable increase (significant at 5%) in the number of families: 1.8% per year from 2006 to 2015 (table 1). Second, although the number of family farms remained nearly constant over the period of analysis (positive but insignificant growth rate of 1% per year), we found remarkable differences within the subgroups of family farms. For example, the number of family farms with market-oriented production showed a negative growth rate (−0.8% per year), while group of linked to subsistence agriculture showed a relevant and significant increase (12.1% per year) between 2006 and 2015.

Table 1. Source: own source based on the PNADs / IBGE Microdata (2015) Note:

Asterisks (**, *) express significance at 5% and 10%, respectively. The two dashes (-) mean the types of families with less than 6 observations in the sample

On the one hand, this result may suggest that the expansion of the agricultural frontier in rural areas in the Amazon (reflected in the increased total number of families under analysis in table 1) did not stimulate the growth of commercial family farming, probably due to the intensification of competition in agricultural activity. On the other hand, this result may suggest that the expansion of the frontier was associate with the growth of the most vulnerable type of family farming, which is linked exclusively to the subsistence agriculture. Although these results do not establish a cause-effect relationship, they indicate important and opposite trends for extreme groups of family farms in the Brazilian Amazon.

Table 1 also highlights divergent trends for the non-family farms of employers (group 1) and employees (group 4). On the one hand, the number of employer non-family farms grew at a positive and significant rate– 15.1% per year (significant at 5%), – which may be associated with the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the Amazon. On the other hand, the number of families of employees remained nearly constant. In other words, the expansion of the agricultural frontier may have increased the number of farms, but based on the intensive use of labor-saving technologies, which may explain the lack of a significant trend of growth in the families of agricultural employees.

Table 2 shows the trends for the relative participation of the family types. The family types with the most significant relative gains were: families of employers (group 1, 13% per year), and family farming with subsistence agriculture (group 3-B, 10% per year). While the former group (employers) represented a small share of the population in 2015, approximately 1%, the latter group (subsistence agriculture) represented 11% of the total rural families in the North region. The family farming linked to commercial production presented the most significant loss (2.6% per year).

Table 2. Source: own source based on the PNADs / IBGE Microdata (2015) Note:

Asterisks (**, *) express significance at 5% and 10%, respectively. The two dashes (-) mean the types of families with less than 6 observations in the sample

The results in tables 1 and 2 suggest that we had substantial changes in the composition of the types of families during the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the Amazon. Moreover, this change – as it is worth emphasizing in this article – is observed mainly within family farming, which, on the one hand, has become less focused on commercial production and, on the other hand, has been more targeted to the subsistence agriculture.

Table 3 details the composition of self-employed families and family farming. While the non-familiar self-employed families are mostly represented by pluriactivite families (91.9%, in 2015), the familiar self-employed families are mostly characterized by the commercial production (87.3%, in 2015).

Table 3. Source: own source based on the PNADs / IBGE Microdata (2015) Note:

Asterisks (**, *) express significance at 5% and 10%, respectively. The two dashes (-) mean the types of families with less than 6 observations in the sample

Table 4 classifies family farms according to the size of the property/farm. In rural areas in the Amazon region, both self-employed (non-family farming) and family farming families are concentrated in farms with a maximum size of 10ha: in 2015, 68.8% of self-employed families and 68.6% of family farming families. One critical result is that all the self-employed (non-family) families in farms with up to four fiscal modules are multiactive families, especially in up to 100ha. Reiterating that, as pointed out in the Methodology section, for the case of self-employed families (non-family farming) the range of 100ha and more does not have the limit of four fiscal modules, as it has for Family Farming.

Table 4. Source: own source based on the PNADs / IBGE Microdata (2015) Note:

Asterisks (**, *) express significance at 5% and 10%, respectively. The two dashes (-) mean the types of families with less than 6 observations in the sample

Another issue that may further aggravate family farming’s fragility, besides the limited availability of land pointed out in previous comments, is the farmer’s land tenure condition. A joint analysis of tables 4 and 5 shows that, in 2015, more than two thirds (68.6%) of family farmers (commercial and subsistence agriculture) in rural areas in the North region had farms with a maximum of 10 hectares of area (table 4). Almost half (45.8%) of these family farmers did not own these lands (table 5). When concerning families of family farms with commercial production, the percentage of families that do not own the land dropped to 27%, which is still relatively high.

Table 5. Source: own source based on the PNAD / IBGE Microdata