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Abstract
The objective of this article is to identify and characterize the environmental reasoning of local farmers and agriculturalists by
understanding the world views, perceptions, knowledge bases, and socio-environmental practices of two rural communities situated in the
proximities of the source of the River Rio Grande, in the municipality of Bocaina de Minas, Minas Gerais. Specifically, this article attempts
to characterize the meaning and importance that the natural resources have for these rural producers: to identify and analyze the use that
these producers make of their resources, in order to understand what is the type of established relationship between these social actors and
the natural world that envelopes them. This analysis is performed by qualitative analyzes, thereby allowing a privileged understanding of the
behaviors and eliefs of the subjects under investigation. The results of the investigation show that the rural agricultural producers under
study, live generally through subsistence farming - there are very few producers that engage in commercial production of agricultural goods.
These social actors see themselves as an integrated part of the natural environment that surrounds them and have a well developed sense
environmental rationale, and a reasoning system that guides their actions in relation to their use of natural resources. This rational is the fruit
of the integration of their knowledge of their natural surroundings and ecosystems which they have acquired and developed for countless
generations - we will call this traditional knowledge. In this sense, these rural producers can not only contribute greatly to our modern
academic understanding of their practices but also to the knowledge of the modern diverse social actors who are trying to contemporaneously
conserve not only the environment in which the traditional rural producers live, but also their traditional knowledge base itself, especially
where this knowledge pertains to the native Flora and Fauna and in particular the specific natural cycles of this area.