OFFICIAL RURAL CREDIT FOR CACAO IN THE AMAZON: PROBLEM OR SOLUTION?

The use of public policies with the objective of promoting the development of cacao cultivation in the Amazon and, especially in the state of Pará, must be considered as the starting point in the change of paradigms in this matter, and rural credit was decisive in the establishment of plantations of cocoa trees in their first 15 years of their technological phase (1975 – 1990).

Until the beginning of the 1970s, cacao in the Amazon was considered an extractive crop. It was with the advent of the Initial Cocoa Project, created by the Secretary of Agriculture of the State of Pará, that the cocoa tree entered its technological phase. CEPLAC, considering its expertise in cocoa cultivation, was invited to be the technological advisor for the Project, implementing the technology that was already being implemented in the cocoa trees deployed in Bahia. To support the actions of new cocoa plantations, subsidized rural credit was one of the main elements to support those producers who were motivated to participate in the Project.

Thus, from the mid-1970s with the advent of PROCACAU until its end in 1985, development programs such as PROTERRA and POLOAMAZÔNIA, among other things, entered as providers of financial resources for rural credit. These incentives had a small stoppage between 1985 and 1989, being resumed at the end of 1989 with the implementation of the credit program called Constitutional Funds (North, Northeast and Midwest of Brazil).

However, an issue that has been established for some time is that, even with the availability of financial resources to finance cocoa farming, curiously, what has been seen is the return of these resources to the source of the National Treasury, as farmers apparently, they do not feel encouraged to seek these resources.

In order to try to understand the reasons for such events, a field survey was carried out in some municipalities of the Transamazonica, a region that represents almost 80% of all the movement of production and planted area of cocoa trees in the state of Pará, where farmers report that excessive bureaucracy, lack of information about credit programs and private financing on the part of cocoa buyers are the main reasons for their choice not to seek official credit.

Segundo Amin (1988 p. 13), o fator que mais influenciou no desenvolvimento da cacauicultura na Amazônia foi, sem dúvida alguma, o crédito rural. Sem o apoio financeiro das Instituições bancárias e dos órgãos federais, encarregados de orientar o processo de implantação, o cacau não seria uma das principais fontes de renda do setor rural e uma das mais importantes atividades agrícolas da região Amazônica.