Scale-appropriate mechanization as a pathway to sustainable family farming: farm-level evidence from Northeast Brazil
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Family farming is central to sustainable food systems, rural livelihoods, and food security in Brazil, but many family farms in the Northeast still face labor constraints and limited access to machinery suited to small, fragmented, and diversified production systems. Scale-appropriate mechanization may offer a targeted pathway to address labor bottlenecks, improve operational timeliness, lower operational costs, and support locally adapted mechanization services. This study examined farm-level changes associated with the adoption of small- to medium-scale agricultural machinery in family-farming systems of Northeast Brazil, focusing on labor use, machine-use intensity, mechanization-related operational cost, and the practical conditions shaping mechanization outcomes. The analysis combined a purposively selected balanced before-and-after panel of 59 regular pilot-project machinery-using family farm cases, giving 118 observations. The before period represented farmers’ regular production practices, while the after period represented regular use of machinery introduced through the pilot project, complemented by operation-level field and qualitative evidence from Apodi, Russas MST, and Maranhão. Farmer fixed-effects models were used to estimate within-farmer before-and-after changes associated with machinery adoption. The results showed that labor use declined from 14.42 to 3.21 h/ha, a reduction of 11.21 h/ha or 77.72%, while machine use increased from 1.06 to 2.95 h/ha, an increase of 1.89 h/ha or 178.35%. Total mechanization-related operational cost declined from R$574.44 to R$184.77/ha, a reduction of R$389.67/ha or 67.83%. Operation-level evidence showed that the largest observed changes were concentrated in rice land preparation, vegetable bed preparation, inter-row weeding, forage harvesting, sowing, and rice harvesting. In Apodi, targeted mechanized operations reduced time by 50.0–96.3% and cost by 45.3–86.0%. In Russas, cooperative machinery use reduced selected operation costs by 61.7–88.5% while in Maranhão, mini combine harvesters sharply reduced rice harvesting time. These findings suggest that scale-appropriate mechanization can improve labor allocation and cost efficiency among machinery-using family-farm cases. However, the before-and-after design does not establish a full causal treatment effect, and sustained benefits depend on machine-agronomy fit, collective access, and localized mechanization support services.
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,353
OpenAlex ID: W7213982637