Políticas de extensão rural no Estado do Amapá: história, discurso e prática extensionista

Abstract

The current mission of Rural Extension and Technical Assistance (RETA) is to promote education processes which can contribute in the construction and execution of rural development strategies, centered in the expansion and reinforcement of family farm and its organization. In this way, the aim of this study was analyzing the rural extension in the Amapá State as politics of dissemination of knowledge for the rural development. The primary interest of the work was verifying the gap between discourse and practice in rural issues. The adopted methodology consisted in the information survey and data collection made in the institutions responsible for Rural Extension and Technical Assistance services available to the family farmers in the Amapá State, in the bibliographic review about the theme and in the interviews with extension workers who worked with extension or still develop activities related to rural extension. With this aim, the study presents the historicity of RETA and the current situation of it in the country, as well the boundaries to the practice of rural extension workers and the discussion about the activities of RETA developed in the Amapá at the time of Federal Territory and in the present-day scenario in the State, as option of access to the family farmers. The study highlighted the diversity of extension worker’s thoughts that contributed with the heterogeneity founded in their practices, determined by institutional changes