correlates with income (r = 0.35). The limited availability of
land to most of the family farmers is shown by the fact that
more than 80% of the family farms dispose of less than one fiscal
module (Table 2 and Figure 1.1). In absolute terms, an average
family farm in Brazil covers an area of 18.37 ha, with the
North East having the smallest area on average of 12.95 ha
in comparison with 40.25 ha in the North, 43.09 ha in the Centre
West, 18.25 ha in South East and 15.36 ha in the South.
While land for the vast majority of the families is rather limited,
the situation regarding workforce is more positive. On
average 2.53 people work on a family farm, which sum up
to a total of more than 11 million working people, representing
around 12% of the number of the economically active population
in Brazil. The vast majority works exclusively on the
farm with only 1.76% of all working people having off-farm
jobs. This figure should not be mixed with the information
released by IBGE (2006) revealing that around 24% of the
family farms in Brazil obtain off-farm income, as most of it
comes from social welfare programs and pensions paid by
the government and not from off-farm jobs. The correlation
with income is weakly negative with the number of people
working in the holding and there is no correlation with the
labor invested in off-farm jobs, which suggests the poor quality
of the working opportunities available for both the on farm
and off-farm workers (Table 2).