07/17/2024 – 18:39
Brasília, July 17 – The federal government wants to stimulate an increase in milk production from small rural producers. Strengthening the dairy sector is one of the “cogs” of the 2024/25 Harvest Plan for family farming, says the Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Farming, Paulo Teixeira. “There are two staple food products that we will pay special attention to in order to stimulate production: rice and milk. The dairy sector was severely affected when milk imports were opened,” Teixeira told reporters, referring to the removal of taxes on imported milk during the Bolsonaro administration. “Rice and milk are products that Brazil does not need to import and can even be exported in their derivatives,” he added.
The minister highlighted that since last year, the government has adopted a series of measures to help producers and curb high imports of milk and dairy products, such as increasing the common external tariff on products imported from countries outside Mercosur and specific lines of debt renegotiation and financing. According to government data, the amount spent on importing powdered milk fell 19.3% in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year and fell 8.9% in volume on the same comparative basis. “Imports have fallen significantly. We are reversing this and strengthening the dairy chain,” he pointed out.
In order to stimulate increased production, the Executive launched specific credit lines aimed at investment in the dairy basin with interest rates of 3% per year for financing animal genetics, pasture recovery, acquisition of milk cooling tanks and milking machines within the official credit policy. “The idea is to provide genetic improvement and increase the herd so that small producers have greater productivity,” said Teixeira.
There are two specific lines of the National Program for Strengthening Family Farming (Pronaf) aimed at food production within the Family Farming Harvest Plan, which runs until June 30 of next year, with subsidized resources and interest of 3% per year for financing operations for conventional production and 2% per year for agroecological production. “These are negative interest rates from a financial point of view with strong government subsidies,” Teixeira pointed out.
Another priority area in the 2024/25 Harvest Plan for family farming will be microcredit through Pronaf B, aimed at financing farming families with an income of up to R$50,000 per year. The credit limit for families was increased from R$10,000 to R$12,000 and for women from R$12,000 to R$15,000, with the creation of an independent limit for young rural workers of R$8,000. “It is a program that works very well in the Northeast with the Constitutional Fund and includes the poorest producers in credit and technical assistance. Now, together with financial institutions, we are seeing the extension to the North and Central-West,” said the minister. In the last harvest, microcredit operations grew 34% to 879,000 contracts and 94% in volume of resources, to R$5.94 billion.
According to Teixeira, the guarantees used in the Constitutional Funds of the North and Central-West were compared to those of the Northeast and the methodology used by financial agents was shared with regional banks in the North and Central-West. “We will test this throughout Brazil. Where there is no constitutional fund, we launched a guarantee fund for producers and cooperatives to take out loans when they no longer have a guarantee. Now, there is a guarantee fund for Pronaf financing throughout the country, with the Operations Guarantee Fund (FGO), the Micro and Small Business Support Fund of Sebrae (for cooperatives) and the Investment Guarantee Fund with BNDES (FGI/BNDES for cooperatives),” he noted. According to the minister, the guarantee funds launched by the ministry with BNDES and Sebrae are already available. “Regarding the FGO, we requested validation from the Chamber of Deputies through a bill for the use of the FGO in Pronaf”, he pointed out regarding the inclusion of Pronaf family farmers and their cooperatives in the list of FGO beneficiaries.
According to the minister, another pillar of the Family Harvest Plan is to nationalize access to credit for small producers. Currently, 3 million family farmers are eligible to access government programs registered in the National Family Farming Registries (CAFs) or Pronaf Eligibility Declarations (DAPs). “The 2024/25 Harvest Plan for family farming as a whole has more resources, lower interest rates and more steps for producers to access financing, with the guarantee that the resources will reach everyone,” he pointed out. The 2024/25 Harvest Plan for family farming has R$76 billion in resources to finance small producers.
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