Agroecology and Critical Extension as a political proposal for peasant resistance

Abstract

The Latin American peasantry represents a large part of the rural population and has been historically associated with different degrees of poverty. This has made it a sector of interest for rural development of public policies. The advance of capitalist relations in the countryside has deepened the processes of concentration of productive resources, appropriation and overexploitation of natural resources and has generated processes of social differentiation with a tendency towards peasant proletarianization. In this context, from the Latin American critical thinking and in strong link with peasant social movements, critical proposals to the classical models of rural development and extension, such as agroecology and critical extension, have emerged. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of how, from the conceptual developments and proposals of critical extension and agroecology, contributions to peasant resistance are generated. By presenting the dynamics of peasants' insertion in contemporary capitalism and the theoretical-methodological contributions of agroecology and critical extension, it is possible to point out that both address aspects that make up the individual and collective resistance of peasants. Because of the political perspectives they share, agroecology and critical extension complement each other in a field of study and action, where the former proposes a technical-political proposal for the management of agroecosystems and the latter allows action and reflection on processes of territorial transformation.