Solidarity Economy and the Socio-Environmental Sust. of Family Farming

To understand the family farmers’ own trajectories and conceptions of their experiences of solidarity practices, focussing greater attention on the historically constructed ways of dealing with production management, the forms of interaction in the market, the relationship established between the settled families, and to assess the monetary and non-monetary economic gains that come from the practices of social relations of solidarity and reciprocity. It can be seen that the characteristics of the social relationships, the pre-existing bonds of solidarity and organisation within the group of settlers influence the development of criteria and norms for managing events in the settlement, which have made it possible to create mechanisms for internal participation and relations with external organisations. It was also possible to see that, as a result of these experiences, the project’s settlers have achieved various gains, both material, in terms of land ownership and market interaction and the generation of family income, and immaterial, which are the results in terms of training, reciprocity and winning partnerships.