With the understating of the Brazilian family farming as a social and productive category from the 90s, many public policy programs have been formulated to ensure its propagation as a basic food producer, and to keep the man on the field. In this context, this paper intends to analyze the family farming in the municipalities of the "Fruit Circuit" in São Paulo State, Brazil, taking into account the importance of the access to the main public policy programs, which aim at strengthening this agriculture. Since this region is characterized by the strong presence of family farmers, we analyzed the following programs: Pronaf (National Program for Strengthening of Family Farming), PAA (Food Acquisition Program), and PNAE (National School Feeding Program), which have been the major initiatives of valuing this agriculture's sector in São Paulo. It was noticed that, considering the universe of the family farming in the studied municipalities, their participation in these public programs is still small. Among the factors that may explain this situation, we highlight the lack of information to farmers about the programs, but especially the low value paid to them.
family farming; public polices; Pronaf; Food Aquisition Program; National School Feeding Program
