TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO AGRICULTURE IN SÃO PAULO

Abstract

The State of São Paulo is the only unit of the Federation not affiliated to the national system of technical assistance and rural extension coordinated by the Brazilian Enterprise for Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (EMBRATER). In this state, technical assistance to agriculture was and still is the responsability of the Secretary of Agriculture who maintains a complex of organs and entities for this purpose. The present study analyzes the evolutionary process of official technical assistance in São Paulo beginning in the 1940's, and its role in the technical development of agriculture in São Paulo. Four phases are distinguished during the course of this process: agricultural incentives (1942-48), rendering of services (1949-58), rural extension (1959-67) and technical assistance (beginning in 1967), with the creation of CATI. Institutional changes took place parallel to modifications in the content or significance of technical assistance itself. Such changes express the evolution of agriculture in São Paulo from the point of view of the capitalistic transformations which took place within it.