NEW SKILLS FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT ACTORS IN THE AMAZON

Abstract

This paper is based upon the experience of the Núcleo de Estudos Integrados sobre a Agricultura Familiar (Neaf) of the Universidade Federal do Pará which develops four types of training: master of science, agronomist, agricultural training at high schools and continuous training for extension agents. Considering the big changes at work in public policies and advances in research on sustainable development of smallholder production, this paper reflects upon the new skills needed in the work of development agents and particularly of agricultural extension agents (working in public or private institutions). These different types of training are considered here as research opportunity about those skills and about knowledge needed for development actions. In conclusion we discuss the necessary creation of new professional identities by these rural development actors. The new context of public policies in rural development in the Amazon since 1996 induced actually traditional responses like clientelism or paternalism, barely hidden behind new discourses about participation and citizenship. However, it also gave the opportunity of original responses - which we call discrete innovations - to emerge in the field and to be partially recognized or institutionalized. Recomposition of skills and identities of practitioners like agronomists should be articulated with these discrete innovations that research must detect and formalize.