Trajetórias familiares na pecuária leiteira no sul do Brasil: entre a especialização e o fim da atividade

The present study aims to contribute in identifying and explaining the changes in the production systems of family farmers producing bovine milk in Southern Brazil. Research of historical and comparative nature was conducted, through longitudinal analysis of the trajectories of family farmers, using as empirical context the reality of 58 families, in 2003 and 2018, belonging to the municipality of Salvador das Missões, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The results highlight the historical trend of specialization, gains of scale and productive concentration in dairy farming, in parallel with the process of discontinuity in the production and sale of milk by an expressive part of the surveyed families. The longitudinal study allowed us to identify: a majority of families migrating from commercial production to the category of no milk production; a fragmentary movement of families from the category of self-consumption to the category of commercial producers; and the inexistence of families that went from not producing to producing milk. Discontinuity of production was associated with smaller families, with a higher average age of its members, without successors and less support from public policies. With less labor available, milk production was replaced by grain production and they became more dependent on rural retirement.