EXTENSION, POPULAR EDUCATION AND AGROECOLOGY IN FAMILY AGRICULTURE: EXPERIENCE REPORT OF STUDENTS AND GRADUATE TEACHERS

Abstract

Objectives: This article presents reflections on the Popular Extension and its relationship with activities in agroecological agriculture and organic food production with small producers in the interior of the West of Paraná. Theoretical reference: The research carries out an epistemological discussion of the Popular Extension that is recognized in the fusion of horizons with Popular Education, with Agroecology and with the Organic Production of Food. They are prospects for other epistemologies that demand other forms of production and consumption in the direction of the Agroecological Transition. Methodology: It is a report of a qualitative nature that allows in the context of the visit to family farmers a attentive listening of the subjects as well as records of their lines and their practices, understanding the rural property as an educational space. Results and conclusion: The results point to ways and forms of production in the countryside with important belonging, protagonism, partnerships and search for autonomy in the direction of sustainable agriculture. The challenges lie in the construction of public policies aimed at confronting the hegemonic logic of agribusiness and the change towards a project for a society demanded by family farming, agroecological and organic. Research Implications: The popular extension guided by the principles of Popular Education offers decisive inputs that can favor the perspective of valorization of the field knowledge and of learning field pedagogies that recognize the potentialities of a dialogical extension. Originality: The results obtained in the study present original and unprecedented aspects by the movements that are being carried out in the context of the discipline of Innovative Extension linked to the Postgraduate Program in Sustainable Rural Development, mainly by the perspective of a Popular Extension that bets on the dialogical relationship between the knowledge of family farming and the academic knowledge of Postgraduate Studies.