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DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Goat’s Milk Boosts Local Economy

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 26 2004 (IPS) - “Before, the richest guy around here was an old pensioner, but now it’s me,” proclaimed a proud campesino living on a seemingly barren hill in the Brazilian region of Carirí. And the reason for this change of fortune is goat’s milk.

In many poor municipalities in Brazil, elderly retirees are the primary source of income, since they draw a monthly pension equivalent to the minimum salary of 260 reals (roughly 90 dollars).

Thanks to goat farming, however, a significant economic recovery is underway in the 31 municipalities that make up the area known as Carirí, located in the interior of the north-eastern state of Paraíba.

Over the last decades, the area had becoming increasingly poverty-stricken due to a decline in traditional cotton and cattle production, Luis Alberto Amorim, coordinator of the Carirí New Deal project, told IPS.

The Carirí project is just one of more than 50 successful local development initiatives featured at the third Expo Brazil fair currently underway in Olinda, a city in the state of Pernambuco, also in north-eastern Brazil. The event, which began Wednesday and ends Saturday, has attracted close to 2,500 participants.

Hit by frequent droughts, Carirí was left with few economic prospects, and this led to a mass exodus of the population. There are currently only 256,000 inhabitants, and 46 percent live in rural areas.

Four years ago, a lengthy process of discussion and analysis led to the decision to turn to goat farming as an alternative economic activity, Amorim explained. Goats were considered an ideal choice, based on the area’s history of animal rearing and the natural conditions.

In the beginning, the project ran into a number of hurdles, like the unfulfilled commitments of processing and milk powder production plants.

The New Deal, which involves the federal and state governments as well as numerous state institutions, helped revive the initiative.

Plans to incorporate goat’s milk into social programmes were thwarted when people complained about its unpleasant odour. This problem was solved by training the goat farmers in proper milking techniques.

In October 2001, the locally produced milk began to be processed, with a daily output of 275 litres. Output has now reached 9,000 litres a day, and it is hoped that it will rise to 10,000 litres by the end of this year and then double to 20,000 litres next year, said Amorim.

The 700 goat farmers in Carirí are organised in nine associations, and the nine processing plants employ 1,600 people, while generating another 3,000 indirect jobs.

In addition to local government social programmes, the national government has also begun to promote the purchase of goat milk through its Zero Hunger programme, which distributes money to very poor families to ensure proper nutrition, while encouraging local production.

According to Amorim, the impact of the project has been tremendous. The rural areas of Carirí now have a new source of income, in addition to old-age pensions, which has given a boost to the local economy. “People have regained their self-esteem, and a new dynamism has emerged, with the development of new economic activities,” he said.

Sales of goat meat and leather crafts have grown considerably, thanks to a 54 percent increase in the region’s goat and sheep flocks over the last two years.

The area has even managed to develop a blossoming tourism industry with the Goat Festival in Cabaceiras, one of the driest towns in Brazil, which manages to attract 35,000 visitors from as far away as Europe, thanks to its one-of-a-kind scenery, said Amorim.

Expo Brazil, held annually since 2001, is a showcase for the best local development experiences from around the country, as well as “a time for collective learning”, said Juarez de Paulo, the local development director of the Brazilian Micro Enterprise and Small Business Support Service (SEBRAE).

When it was first founded, SEBRAE provided support to small businesses on a case by case basis, but five years ago, it changed its approach and began to operate as a development agency, “expanding our focus from the business to the geographical area, and from the individual to the group,” de Paulo told IPS.

At Expo Brazil, it is the local producers themselves who present their successful experiences, helping to spread awareness of regional projects like the one in Carirí, as well as cooperatives and solidarity economy initiatives, which create jobs and generate income.

In another region of Pernambuco, de Paulo noted, a group of cooperatives were organised for the manufacture of hammocks, blankets and other goods made from spun cotton yarn. The cooperatives were provided with initial advice on design, and now their products are exported all the way to Europe. Best of all, the initiative has provided employment for 3,000 families, he reported.

This focus on small, community-based enterprises, which provide the greatest potential for job creation, is what is needed for the country’s development in general, de Paulo said. Until now, most development strategies have concentrated on big businesses, “which could never be attracted to set up shop in 80 percent of Brazilian municipalities,” he said.

This lack of emphasis on local development is one of the reasons why micro-credits have not expanded in Brazil to the same degree as in some other countries, said Caio Silveira, the coordinator of Expo Brazil in Olinda.

The fair “presents a Brazil that is largely unknown,” and gives greater visibility to small isolated projects being carried out in remote rural zones or in outlying areas of large cities, noted Silveira, a sociologist who works with SEBRAE.

The goal of Expo Brazil is to back these initiatives and promote the formation of associations and linking as a means of gaining access to financing, since the event is also attended by representatives of development agencies and national and international development banks.

It is also a way of putting local development on the national agenda, Silveira concluded.