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The purpose of this paper is to bring the theory of reciprocity closer to the rural networks analysis methodology, in the context of endogenous rural development in mountain environments. The main idea behind the concept of rural networks is to give a new meaning to the expression 'rural development'. This re-signification arises from the observation of the diversity of territories and populations that exist in regions that are making the border between rural and urban increasingly invisible. Moreover, from this finding, the authors identify the need for a new methodology that can, at the same time, look at the spaces through the concept of networks and think rural development as something beyond mercantile exchanges. The proposal to approach the theory of reciprocity is to better understand, and hence justify, a differentiated look within social organizations, their functioning and the interconnections that can coexist within groups. It was found, in both theories, points of convergence; one of them is to make increasingly the formulation, application and analysis of public policies. A second point is the perception of spaces from the concept of social networks. Thus, it is in the junction of very close thoughts that the article proposes the analysis of these new forms of territories occupation, especially those that are in mountainous regions and are destined to the rural production in sustainable bases, with the objective of contributing with the construction of knowledge in the scenarios of public policies and endogenous rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is intended to analyze the actions of three programs for family agriculture support in national level: the National Program for Strengthening of Family Agriculture (PRONAF), the Program for Acquisition of Foods (PAA) and the National Program for Sustainable Development of Rural Areas (PRONAT), by means of distinct strategies, namely: granting of subsidized credit, acquisition of farming and livestock production and fomentation of actions to develop the territory. However, their operation presents several issues, which renders it difficult to accomplish their objectives. For this paper, a survey was carried out on data from official sources and documents. Thus, we could observe that, despite the relevance of these three public policies in the fomentation of rural development, family farmers are still facing difficulties to commercialize their production, to access credit and are also affected by lack of technical assistance. Another problem observed was the priority given to modern agriculture, even in actions of support to family agricultures, as occurs with PRONAF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of multifunctionality suggests that agriculture provides to society productive, ecological, and cultural functions. Public policies that promote a combination of different functions can improve multifunctional landscape performance. The objective of this paper is to present an evaluation method of multifunctional landscapes based on values systems of local stakeholders that can be used to support the development of public policies for rural development. This method used a geographic information system to identify the elements present in the study area located in the city of Joinville, Santa Catarina, between 2010 and 2012. From interviews with 53 people were assigned values for 15 descriptors representing the productive, ecological and cultural features of each element identified. These values were weighted considering the percentage of area occupied by each element and its form index. The weighted results showed the best multifunctional performance with the Water Resources opposed to Agroecosystems. The proposed method has advantages because it allows: a) quantifying the intuitive perceptions facilitating the interpretation of complex situations, b) assess rural landscapes at different scales, c) understand the performance of each function and the balance between the functions of the landscape. But, it also has weaknesses: a) is not objective, since it derives from viewpoints b) responses may get interference related to the attitude of the researcher c) the results have limited validity in time and space, d) commitment of respondents defi ne the validity of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]