摘要:This article analyzes the mechanisms by which tobacco farming families to implement diversification initiatives and analyze the dynamics of these changes in Santa Cruz do Sul/RS. It is intended to verify motivations and production diversification alternatives in most tobacco producing region of the country, and what public policies are mobilized. This requires an analysis will be done considering negative effects of agricultural modernization, in particular on peasant agriculture, considering social, economic and environmental. The theoretical framework encompasses mobilized the risk society Ulrich Beck and the prospect oriented actor Long and Ploeg. As results, it appears that diversification initiatives manifest a self-confrontation to the risks produced by the tobacco monoculture which is guided in the dictates of the Green Revolution. This diversified production tends to strengthen the agency's capacity of farmers in response to the risks produced by this production chain and emerge from a perspective where the individual peasant, according to their reality, their way of life, seeks to minimize these effects.