Proposal for Training Extension Agents for Small-Scale Farmers in Southern Parana, Brazil

Summary

The importance of Southern Parana has increased over the last decade because of its rapid agricultural development.

At lat. 25°S and 800–1000 m above sea level, it has a subtropical, humid, mesothermic climate, with cool summers and some nightfrosts in winter. There is no marked dry season. The landscape is slightly to moderately undulated. Soils are relatively acid and at higher altitudes are low in nutrients. The original vegetation comprised campos (grassland) on both hill tops and unfertile plains. The more fertile land bordering rivers was forested, particularly with Parana-pine (Araucaria angustifolia).

The plains are occupied by large farms producing soya, wheat and rice as well as grasses and legumes for dairy cattle. Smaller farms, scattered throughout the region, produce maize, beans, rice and sweet potatoes. While large-scale farming is experiencing economic expansion, social and economic conditions are deteriorating for small-scale farming.

A program in biological agriculture is needed to train people who could provide these farmers with technical assistance and help in reconstructing community life while safeguarding their social and cultural values. Such a program is in accordance with the aims of the “Piano de açao 1978” (the action plan of the Department of Agriculture), and would hopefully receive support. It could be offered by the Instituto Cristao, which was founded in 1971 by North American missionaries, and subsequently taken over by the Dutch farming community, who expanded the teaching to include secondary agricultural and home economics programs.

The program proposed here will train secondary school agricultural graduates to work as both agricultural technicians and local leaders.

The first year will comprise practical and classroom study with some experimental work designed to examine new crops and techniques.

Close collaboration would be sought with local agricultural research institutes and cooperatives, experts (e.g., from the government agency Acarpa) and extension agents from the Technical Assistance Department of the Central Cooperative.

Graduates will be encouraged to return to their own regions where they could farm and work with the coooperatives, development organizations and government “agencies. In this way gradual but sustainable change will be achieved and the gap between the social and economic conditions of small and large-scale farms closed.