Antropoceno, regime de informação e produção alimentar no Brasil: estudo de caso de uma rede alimentar alternativa urbana

Abstract

This thesis investigates urban Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) under a dialogue of the literature with the case study of the Association of Agriculture of Campinas and Region (ANC), a Brazilian urban AFN. The research makes both empirical and theoretical questions to analyze whether the ANC constitutes an alternative to development, responding to the socio-environmental problems that affect the planet, among which, the environmental degradation caused by conventional and industrial agriculture. This model of agriculture plays a crucial role in deepening the effects of the Anthropocene, which relates to a period in which marks left on the planet by human activities are as intense as those caused by geological phenomena. The problem leading this study sought to analyze to what extent informational dynamics of AFNs and the activities they develop contribute to the consolidation and autonomy of the network, being itself a response to the Anthropocene at a local level. Since the mobilization of producers and the expansion of the consumer market are major challenges for the creation and maintenance of AFNs, its informational dynamics were investigated. Thus, among the goals met by the work were the identification and analysis of the obstacles and benefits of urban Alternative Food Networks to cope with the Anthropocene. The methodology had a systemic approach, adopting as theoretical field the discussion about the current state of environmental degradation that the term Anthropocene seeks to delimit. In the empirical field, qualitative research was conducted with producers and consumers of the network, followed by informational analysis and the discussion of results under the theoretical framework. This one discusses the paradigmatic change needed to deal with the challenge of environmental degradation in the Anthropocene, in a scenario where intensive global population growth and industrial agriculture impose themselves as a risk to maintaining human life by affecting the food security of populations around the world. Despite gaining ground on international political agendas, this challenge grows in the vacuum of effective global environmental governance under the subjacent oxymoron of the Sustainable Development Goals. At the level of the territories of the Global South countries, where Brazil belongs, the Anthropocene is perpetuated through the prevalence of (neo) extractivist practices related to the deepening of social inequality, which affect firstly and more deeply the poorest, but not exclusively. The work concludes that the ability of the ANC network to respond to the Anthropocene as space for articulating environmental awareness at the level of the territories relies on its understanding of the limitations related to the constraints of the information regimen in which it is inserted and which is guided by the idea of sustainable development. This would enable the ANC to act as an effective response to the Anthropocene by disseminating values and practices that effectively mobilize civil society towards the deep paradigmatic review in which man understands itself as part of the Earth System. By replicating this model, it could inspire local public policies, and these, by communicating with other decision-making spheres, would ultimately contribute to the building of an effective global environmental regime.