SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND SUSTAINABILITY: CHALLENGES TO AGRO-ECOLOGICAL RURAL EXTENSION IN AGRARIAN REFORM SETTLEMENTS

Abstract

: An analysis of social movements underscores items within the historical process that pinpoints the singularity of their protagonists and new types of activities. When rural social movements achieve the desired settlements after a long process of struggles and vindications, they extend the milieu built by the same process of collective organization and political awareness to the daily life of the rural settlements. This fact produces certain specificities that make people in the settlements materialize a new production organization within the agricultural context. Sustainable agriculture absorbed such organization level. Current research discusses the feasibility of agrarian reform rural settlements within the agro-ecological paradigm of sustainability, based on the “New Rural Extension” proposal. It is a mediating process that develops a new pathway and gives a new perspective to family agriculture in Brazil’s rural settlements.