vi
NORONHA, A. F. B. Household farming, rural extension and agroforest
systems: the CAV experience in Alto Jequitinhonh. 2008. 119. (Dissertation –
Master in Administration).
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ABSTRACT
Agroforest system (SAF) is an agricultural production technique in which
woody arboreal species (fruit and/or wood bearing trees) combine with
temporary croppings of annual cycle. SAFs have the capacity, along their
management, to make productive degraded areas, improving their productive
and ecological use. One has, then, an important tool apropriate for familiar
farmers as a basis for public programs for combatting rural poverty, feeding
safety, conservation of natural resources and environmental education. In Alto
Vale do Jequitinhonha region, the SAF´s practice was proposed by the Centro de
Agricyultura Alternativa Vicente Nica (Vicente Nica Alernative Farming
Center), CAV, seeking the recovery of the intensament degraded and exploited
areas, known in the place as peladores, in order to turn them into productive
areas. SAF, in addition to its gains in the environmental and economic aspects
constitutes as a space of technical innovation for the family and community. In
this sense, its possibilities of irradiating innovating effects inside the
community, both from the perspective of the farmer practicing SAF and from
the perspective of the farmer not practicing SAFs, but who live in the same
community: to what extent SAF manages to establish dialogues, exemplify,
potentiate working progams associated with innovation or to environmental
conservation. It was also aimed to investigate to what extent the accumulation of
experiences lived by the monitorial farmers of SAF presents potential to
influence local public programs and to build new participations with the
organization nets of the twons which are constituent of it. The research was
carried out in seven rural communities of the town of Turmalina, Minas Novas,
Chapada do Norte, Veredinha and Leme do Prado, where there was the
participation of professionals and students of the Universidade Federal de Lavras
(Nucleo de Pesquisa e Apoio à Agricultura Familiar = Nucleus of Resarch and
Support to Household Farming) in eight agroforest systems of production. CAV
technicians and household farmers (monitors and non-monitors of CAV) in eight
agroforest systems of production. Among the results, the inovation in the
working methodology adopted by CAV stands out, where the monitors, with
their knowledge and techniques, are actors of
fundamental importance in the
construction of developmental policies. The farmers are the experimenters of the
SAFs techniques, giving opinions and adaptating the technique to the several
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Adviser: Áureo Eduardo Magalhães Ribeiro- UFLA.