Assistência técnica e extensão rural ou assessoria técnica e social?: visões opostas do apoio à agricultura familiar.

Abstract

The aim of this work was to study cases of official and alternative technical assistance (EMATER-PB, Project LUMIAR, AS-PTA and PATAC), seeking to reflect over the conditions of its adequacy to efficiently support family agriculture. With this purpose, we tried to investigate: Which is the role of state and public politics for technical assistance and countryside extension concerning family agriculture? Which are the relationships, agreements and conflicts between technicians and farmers? Is it possible to identify and build up other relationships which can make farmers able to design their own projects in a more autonomous way? Besides, we tried to verify how the work methodologies used by the technical assistance favor or hamper this process, and which are the limits and possibilities of existence of another technical assistance which is concerned with the interests of family farmers. The results of study gave evidence that it is crucial to improve the dialog between technicians who are in charge of the technical assistance programs and family farmers. The improvement of this dialog must take place at the time of conception and implementation of assistance programs, but mostly, in the process of their evaluation, through direct participation of the farmers. This study highlights the need to reconsider, in a theoretical way and from practical experiences, the social control of the programs for supporting family agriculture. From the methodological and technical point of view, the participate strategies developed in the Project LUMIAR, at AS-PTA and at PATAC, based on agroecology, show the great ability of family agriculture to take advantage of the diversity of biological resources and optimization of the use of manual work, with the objective of consolidating as a strategy of rural development.