APICULTURE IN RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL: A FOUR-YEAR FOLLOW-UP SURVEY

Abstract

Rio Grande do Norte apiculture grew 500% between 2000 and 2009, promising to be an emergent proposal for agricultural sector in semiarid region. However from 2009 to 2015, production and beekeeping income fell sharply mainly due to typical climatic conditions of semiarid region, but with greater intensity in the period; drought drastically devastated northeast Brazil between the years 2012-2015 and fall of State GDP reduced incomes of beekeepers, which caused a disincentive and led this activity to decline. In October 2012 a follow-up survey started in order to assess beekeeping sustainability as family farming in the State through its social, economic and environmental indicators, and in October 2015 survey was finished with the same respondents, enabling to drawing a profile of beekeeping in the State during that period. PSI/ER (Pressure-State-Impact/Effect-Response) matrix was used to design the questionnaire itself. 63 random samples, surveyed in 2012 and untimely replicated till 2015, were analyzed. It was found that honeybees' colonies abscond with drought and high temperatures; beekeeping is greatly influenced, positively and negatively, by environment and public policies, despite the efforts dedicated to apiculture in region; and that, according to respondents, beekeeping is still underdeveloped mainly due to social problems (49.9%) as low participation of women, low educational level, aging of beekeepers; economic/technological problems (30.9%) as lack of quality of bee products, diversification of production, proper management and lack of financing; and environmental problems (19.2%) as drought and high temperatures. The absence of a methodology to avoiding effects of external variables to production process at family farming level has led this activity to decline.