Programa de Feiras orgânicas no município de Belo Horizonte, MG: caracterização, potencialidades, limites e desafios

Abstract

This work aims the analysis of the Organic Market Program (OMP), In Belo Horizonte (BH) – MG, created in 2002, using the case study methodology. A documental research in personal archives, food safety undersecretary documents, and specific bibliographic review was conducted, interviews with organic farmers/marketer, technicians (EMATER-MG and City Hall), managers and executors of the program. Since 2015 (year of the last public notice), 05 organic farmers (04 of them are family farmers) are licensed to attend to the OMP. The nine OMP marketing stands are located in upper and high-class areas, given that, researches were conducted: 03 stands with one farmer and another two with one farmer on each. All the 05 producers participating in the program are from Metropolitan Belt cities around BH and the main motivations to start the organic farming were financial return and health. Since the monthly packing list delivered by the marketers to the City Hall to comply with the OMP regulation, it was noticed a good financial return (on average R$ 750,00 per month each stand) and each organic farmer could have up to 04 stands. The main identified bottlenecks were: - a small number of organic farmers accessing the OMP-BH after 13 years since the policy creation; - to diversify the offer, organic products from other cities in Minas Gerais and other states are sold, mainly fruits, eggs and industrialized products; -low integration between the organic farmers of that region to pressure for new public notices to amplify the program; - poor divulgation and transparency in the elaboration of raw goods and poor exposure of prices on the stands for costumers’ consultation; -bad/nonexistent labeling on packed, slightly industrialized and industrialized products; - products like eggs and vegetable industrialized products without organic certification, environmental or health approval; - weak connection between public authorities, academia and civil society to approach the organic farming experience and build a program in order to instigate the interaction between producers and costumers. Improvement opportunities: - to build a new OMP-BH regulation to stimulate another marketing stands opening in other neighborhoods; - to offload the other organic agro-ecological farming markets in BH; - to join the organic producers groups’ experiences in BH Metropolitan Belt, ecological basis production and urban agriculture experiences to offer institutional markets and other channels within the marketing direct circuit; - to instigate costumers visits to the organic productions units for a better linkage between the organic producers and eco-tourism producers as non-agricultural income. It was concluded that: Only 05 licensed organic producers, 23% of the organic producers from the Metropolitan Belt have access to OMP-BH; 100% of the producers who have access to OMP-BH, have an audited individual certification, what does not favor experiences exchange or building agro- ecological knowledge, encouraging competition instead of partnership between the program’s participants; 100% of the participants’ productive scope in the OMP-BH is primary agricultural production, with diversified production 50% concentrated on leafy production; Nonconformities in relation to industrialized plant products and animal products offered without health certification; Nonconformities in the availability of the producers to the managers of agrotoxins periodic analysis