‎Brazil News

 

The novelty is the result of the actions of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa), which, through the Secretariat of Family Agriculture and Cooperatives (SAF), started, in 2019, the process of reformulating the PNCF, a public policy that offers conditions for family farmers without access to land or with little land to buy and structure a rural property, using financing with resources from the Land Reform Fund. The new format was named Terra Brasil – National Land Credit Program.

 

“We are reducing bureaucracy and expanding family farmers' access to land credit. For this, the Ministry is qualifying the contracting process and guaranteeing more speed in the granting of financing to the Brazilian rural workers who need it most”, says the Ministry's secretary of Family Agriculture and Cooperatives, César Halum.

 

In order to ensure more efficiency to the program, the Map simplified the flow of processing financing proposals, which had a total of 14 stages and now has 6 stages. Another action that contributed to reducing waiting time was the implementation of the Get Credit - Terra Brasil digital service, launched in July 2020, through a partnership between Mapa and the Digital Government Department.

 

The platform makes it possible to send the Technical Financing Project and all documentation of the candidate for beneficiary, the seller and the rural property, in a fully digital way, eliminating the need to deliver physical documentation to the federal government.

 

After the establishment of the new standards by Ordinance No. 123, of March 23, 2021, 22 financing contracts for farmers and rural producers have already been released. For this, the Map counted on a partnership with Banco do Brasil, which confirmed the use of the Get Credit – Terra Brasil digital service and the digital processing of the proposals.

 

Agility and security

The first loan contract approved after the reformulation of the program is from the state of Espírito Santo, municipality of Mimoso do Sul, and was requested by farmer Renan Polinicola, 29, who owns coffee and fruit plantations. The preparation of the technical project, analysis and release of financing took place in approximately three months.

 

“I have worked in agriculture since I was a child with my father and I always wanted to buy a piece of land to take care of, plant, invest and have good results. Today, I am very happy for having been approved by the land credit and for being able to buy my land. I thought the program was very good, efficient and fast”, celebrates Renan.

 

Technician Richard Pacheco is responsible for the project by farmer Renan Polinicola. He says that he has been working with the land credit program for over six years and has been following the reformulation of this public policy. “Before, it was a process that took a long time. It took more than years for a proposal to come out and there was a huge bureaucracy, in addition to the delay in analysis. We noticed that everything was very slow. For a few years now, we have been following an evolution and the new Terra Brasil digital service was the differential, which left everything online. The way we work has changed a lot. Changed for the better. It became much more agile and safer”, says the technician.

 

 

 

The property financed by family farmer Renan Polinicola is located in the municipality of Mimoso do Sul, in Espírito Santo. Photo: Richard Pacheco.

 

Pacheco also emphasizes that Terra Brasil - PNCF is essential in supporting small producers, as, in addition to enabling land purchase, it guarantees the provision of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (Ater) services to the beneficiary, stimulating the development of their activities independently and autonomously.

 

"A producer who is living as a settler, with an agricultural partnership contract, where what he does is to survive, to support his family, from the moment he has this resource to purchase the property, he leaves the situation of almost poverty that is living and becomes family farmer. And that's where the importance of technical assistance comes in, which adds up, as this beneficiary becomes an educated owner, who will have production that will sustain