A configuração socioespacial do Projeto de Irrigação Gorutuba em Nova Porteirinha (MG)

Abstract

Gorutuba Irrigation Project (GOP), in the municipality of Nova Porteirinha on the North of Minas Gerais (MG), resulted from public irrigation policies developed in Brazil since the 1960s. Activities began in 1979, having Bico da Pedra Damas a water source to irrigators, who are divided into small producers (settlers), medium and large entrepreneurs. From the beginning of its activities to this moment, the Project went through several phases. The study used the Spacecategory, essential to analyze the relations between society and the nature of the social relations. The studies of this category are based on Milton Santos (1985) that proposes the fragmentation of the whole through the analytical categories of space: structure, process, function and form, being these inseparable from each other in the study of space. The main objective of this work was to analyze the socio-spatial structure of the Gorutuba Project and specific objectives are: identify the positive and negative aspects of the project; Characterize theprofile of the irrigators and know the different impacts generated by this projectin Nova Porteirinha(MG). Methodology used bibliographic review for theoretical basis; Secondary research was done on institutional and statistical data sites. Fieldwork with data collection in documents held at the 1st Regional Superintendence of CODEVASF and DNOCS, both in Montes Claros (MG). During the on-site visits to the Gorutuba Project, semi-structured and unstructured interviews were done with a tape recorder. Other field data are annotations and photographs taken from the GOP. During the development of the work, various systematizations were made, resulting in its writing, and in tables, charts, figures and maps creation, in addition to transcriptions of recorded reports to capture the essence of the interviewees' speech. Results indicate that there was a change of production and crop diversity; Crops that were initially irrigated with the water resource from the Bico da Pedra Dam, at one point divided space with the water extracted from several artesian wells and, from September 2017, irrigation will be done exclusively with water underground source. In Nova Porteirinha (MG), from 1991 to 2000, there was a significant urban growth, but in the period from 2000 to 2010, this population decreased, with population growthonly in the rural part of the municipality. Thus, it can be seen that activities of the GOP have moved towards their own unsustainability, with option for export monoculture and the exhaustion of the technique, which, not being renewed periodically, became inadequate to the current dynamics of that space.