| dc.description.abstract | Young rural population has been made vulnerable to migrating from rural to urban in the pursuit
of tending to their professional and personal necessities, therefore promoting rural exodus
which leads to diverse consequences, such as masculinization, aging of rural population, the
lack of generational succession and absence of qualified labor. The lack of generational
succession is the framework which sustains this study in analyzing the decisive succession
factors that influence on the generational succession processes of cooperative associate’s
children in cooperatives that operate on the segments of grains, meat and milk in the state of
Rio Grande do Sul. A number of 25 decisive factors have been analyzed by the perspective of
young successors and the agricultural cooperatives’ staff. The methodology utilized is classified
as a research of mixed qualitative and quantitative approaches, utilizing an interview form as
instrument of data collection. The interview form was applied to a total sample of 308 young
successors at the age range between 18 and 30 years old and to one staff member of each
agricultural cooperative, during the period of July to November 2019. As such, the decisive
factors’ degree of importance and performance were analyzed, employing the adapted
methodology of Slack, Chambers and Johnston (2007), called the importance-performance
matrix, which analyzes the factors based on four zones of priority improvements. Beyond
assessing the decisive factors and availing the determinant ones in the permanence of the rural
youth on the fields, the study sought to help agricultural cooperatives on the formulation of
strategies so the rural youth remains on the rural areas guaranteeing the future social continuity
of the cooperative associates existence. Results have pointed that the majority of the young is
composed of single males working on rural properties’ productive activities. Regarding the
decisive factors, in the opinion of the young successors belonging to the meat segment
cooperative, factors that need improvement are the social valuing of the farmer and the price of
the agricultural products. In the milk segment cooperative, decisive factors in need of
improvement are leisure infrastructure within the rural community, social valuing of the farmer
and the price of the agricultural product, highlighting roads infrastructure as the factor that
needs urgent improvement. In the grains cooperative, the decisive factors needing improvement
are leisure structure within the rural community, roads infrastructure, social valuing of the
farmer, agricultural products’ price, rural credit and public policies. Regarding the decisive
factors in the opinion of the cooperative’s staff, none of the decisive factors need improvement
in meat segment cooperative, however 48% of the factors in the grains cooperative and 68% in
the milk cooperative do need improvement. It has been observed that both the young successors
and the agricultural cooperatives share common opinions about the decisive factors. Ergo, it’s
relevant that the cooperatives aim to comprehend the decisive factors that need enhancement
and seek to perfect them, especially those with performance rating below the importance level. | |
