Résumé
The Lula government considerably amplified and diversified the Support to Family Agriculture Program (PRONAF), created by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government in 1995. This long term choice for family agriculture can surprise in Brazil, a country which has always, throughout its history, privileged the entrepreneurial agriculture: latifundia and agricultural businesses. The article analyzes the mechanisms which led to these choices, by examining in particular the role of the trade-union and country organizations in the "construction" of the Support to Family Agriculture Program (PRONAF) and of the Durable Development of the Rural Territories Programme (PDSTR). The permanence of family agriculture in the Brazilian history is explained by its adaptation and resistance capacity, even towards unrealistic projects of modernization which did not take into account the comparative advantages of family agriculture. This capacity of adaptation is born from an daily experimentation, in stories of "local development". Groups of farmers test techniques, practicies or organizations. The dynamism of these movements in made natural partners of the State in the development and the implementation of the PRONAF.
Beyond the difficulties and lack of means, in the daily relations between actors, a way to implementat PRONAF was invented. A new governance was instituted between social movement and government. For the MDA, and more particularly, for the Secretariat of Territorial Development (SDT), the territory is the privileged place of this news governance.
PRONAF and PDSTR are representative of what tends to become the public policies to answer the challenges of a future, increasingly more dubious. They are good examples of programs codefined in continuity (four successive governments), where dialogue allowed pragmatism, decentralization and training to impose themselves in an adaptative practice.