Effects of territorial management on the Rural Development Index for Family Agriculture in the Citizenship Territories in Bahia state, Brazil

After the interruption of the Territories of Citizenship (TC) Program by the Brazilian federal government, Bahia was one of the few Brazilian states that maintained the territorial approach, the “Territories of Identity”. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of territorial management for the TC-Bahia (treatment group) in comparison to TC-Brazil (control group). A Rural Development Index for Family Agriculture (RDI-FA) was developed for two time periods to calculate its evolution for each group. The results showed that the RDI-FA had a significantly higher evolution for TC-Bahia in relation to TC-Brazil (p-value < 0.01). In ten years, TC-Bahia index increased by 0.07 while the rest of TC-Brazil grew by 0.04. We concluded that institutionalization and improvements of Bahian territorial approach has benefited family farmers, especially in the institutional dimension of territorial heritage.