This article analyzes the usual businesses of small landholders of Minas Gerais, the so-called "catiras", investigating why they insist on these transactions, the destination given to the earnings that they obtain, and how they construct solid exchange networks based on trust relationships. Through these they steadily form important material and symbolic patrimonies. This local economic movement, governed by its own rules and peripherally articulated to national markets, is vital for their reproduction strategies, as well as to generate, conserve, and enlarge their patrimonies. The peculiar logic of those exchanges explains several procedures, which are usually considered by technicians and researchers as a little irrational, although they are part of many calculations, firmly employed for years to enlarge the families’ savings.
Family agriculture; Reproduction strategies; Rural extension; Minas Gerais
