Son of soy producers, Murilo Ricardo, 32, no longer imagines living far from the countryside. He, who left Anaurilândia (368 km from Campo Grande, MS) to study agronomy, returned to the interior to help take care of the family’s property.
“The best job opportunities for me are here, and technological advances weighed in the decision to return. In a short time, I was able to implement part of what I learned in the city and studying abroad on the property. Now, we use state-of-the-art technology to take measurements . I can’t imagine being far from the field.”
Data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) indicate that Ricardo’s trajectory is not isolated, and that activities related to the countryside have already surpassed the pre-pandemic employment level, taking into account formal and informal vacancies.
In the third quarter of 2021, the population employed in agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing and aquaculture reached 9 million — the number represents an increase of 574 thousand jobs compared to the third quarter of 2019 (8.5 million), before the crisis sanitary.
In percentage terms, the growth in the period was 6.8%. It is the largest in the list of ten activities analyzed by IBGE. The data are part of the Pnad Contínua (Continuous National Household Sample Survey).
Apart from activities related to the countryside, only the construction sector and the information, communication and financial, real estate, professional and administrative sectors had an increase in the employed population in the same period. The hikes were 2.5% and 2.9%, respectively — results lower than those recorded in the field..
In addition to leading the pace of job creation, agribusiness is also getting younger and more educated, according to an exclusive survey by IDados consultancy, also from Pnad Contínua: the total number of rural workers aged up to 29 is the highest since 2015 In the third quarter of 2021, they were 2.2 million.
In terms of number of workers, the group is still smaller than that of other age groups, but it grew the most compared to before the pandemic, with an increase of 16% compared to the beginning of 2019.
Despite still being a minority, rural workers with incomplete higher education or more have doubled in the last nine years, at a record level. There were 189.8 thousand in the third quarter of 2012. In the same period of 2021, they already totaled 389.8 thousand, according to IBGE data.
In search of quality of life and reduction of expenses, veterinarian Thomaz Coelho, 31, left Rio de Janeiro for Palmópolis, from Minas Gerais, with less than 7,000 inhabitants. “I had a job in Rio, but I was dissatisfied with the city’s routine. I took a public exam and now I work on farms in Minas”, he says.
He also assesses that many more educated young people end up moving to the interior to escape the violence and problems of big cities and that the pandemic should reinforce this movement.
Researcher Felippe Serigati, from the FGV Agro study center, believes that the creation of vacancies in the field reflects a set of factors. One of the main ones is the fact that activities such as agriculture and livestock did not stop operating during the pandemic.
Restrictions adopted to curb the coronavirus affected more sectors such as commerce and services, with great weight in urban centers and dependent on the circulation of consumers.
In addition, the demand for food was heated during the health crisis, encouraging the hiring of workers in the field, says the researcher.
“In 2021, Brazil had drought and frost and, as a result, there was a crop failure. But the investment had already been made. The workforce had already been hired,” he points out.
Researcher Nicole Rennó, from Cepea (Center for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics), has a similar opinion. According to her, the heated demand and rising prices for agricultural products contributed to the increase in the population employed in the pandemic.
“The high prices, which are the main element of the situation, favor jobs. The advance surpassed what was necessary for a recovery”, he says.
Regarding the increase in the number of rural employees with higher education, researcher from IDados and also from FGV Bruno Ottoni says that it is not possible to measure whether this is due to the attraction of university students to the countryside or to the increase in schooling of residents of these regions. But it is likely that both movements are taking place.
“It is important to note that the countryside is one of the sectors that lost the most labor throughout history, because of the mechanization process, which will be accentuated. The new generations of rural workers will have to be better trained for this reality as well. “
INCREASE EMPLOYMENT IS FACING CHALLENGES
Nurse Greice Cizeski, 31, also left city life behind. Amidst the impacts of the pandemic on his work routine, he quit his job at a hospital in the metropolitan region of Florianópolis (SC) last April.
Daughter of rural producers, she chose to return to her family, in the municipality of Morro da Fumaça, about 200 kilometers from the capital of Santa Catarina. She has just opened a cheese factory with her parents in the town of about 18,000 inhabitants.
“All this happened during the pandemic. My father was very supportive,” he says. “I had worked in the fields with my parents until I was 17. Back then, everything was more difficult. There was no technology. Today it’s different,” he says.
The field has been highlighted in the generation of jobs, but, in the horizon for 2022, there is a combination of possible stimuli and risks to the expansion of the workforce.
On the one hand, forecasts indicate a more favorable year from the climate point of view, compared to 2021. This could generate positive effects on the labor market.
The hiring movement, however, is threatened by the rise in production costs, ponders Serigati. Items such as fertilizers, which depend on imports, soared with the high dollar during the pandemic, putting pressure on producers’ pockets.
Nicole also understands that costs challenge the sector in 2022, but projects a positive scenario for job creation in the coming months.
“The perspective is that this improvement in the labor market will continue a little longer, at least in the first quarters of 2022. There is a great challenge, which is the increase in costs, but, in general, we still expect a good year for agriculture”, it says.
“This should continue to favor the labor market and help to hold back a trend that has been going on for many years, which is the reduction in the population employed in agriculture,” says the researcher.
Despite the progress in the crisis, agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing and aquaculture activities still represent less than 10% of the employed population in the country.
In the third quarter of 2021, the approximately 9 million workers in these activities corresponded to 9.7% of a universe of 93 million employed persons.
In the same period, the average income from work, in real terms, was R$ 1,517 in agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing and aquaculture.
The number is the second lowest among the 10 activities of the Continuous Pnad. It is only above the average income obtained from domestic services (R$ 920).
.
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
