Percepção Sócio-Ambiental quanto ao Uso da Terra na comunidade Xavier na Bacia do Rio Curuá-Una, Santarém, Pará

Abstract

The studies on environmental perception have played an important role when used as instruments to understand the ways in which man faces and relates to the environment that surrounds him and with which he necessarily interacts. This work aims to observe the environmental perception of farmers from the Xavier community, located on the banks of the Curuá-Una HPP lake, Santarém/Pará, about the way they occupy and exploit the land as an activity for survival. Semi-structured interviews were carried out, monitoring of activities through interaction with families, seeking to obtain information related to land use and agricultural production systems, identifying the techniques adopted and social actors involved both in agricultural practice and in the process of product processing, in this case, the production of cassava flour. The involvement in agricultural activities is present in the daily lives of all family members, whether they work directly in the fields or contribute with work that converges so that the agricultural activities themselves can be developed. The environmental perception that people who work in the rural environment, more specifically the small farmers, is marked by a deep attachment to the land. Farmers know the land because they earn their living from it and, although this is an arduous activity, "it boasts a seriousness that few other occupations can match" (Tuan, 1980). For having followed and developed activities directly linked to this type of use of natural resources throughout their lives, even if in different ways, the community members bear the characteristic marks of people who have practically always lived from and in the midst of agriculture; marks that are not only physical, but that reveal all the experience and knowledge acquired, reflecting the very way they prefer to identify themselves: farmer, settler, rural man.