Farmers agency at the interface of formal and informal knowledge and innovation systems

• Autor(a) principal: dos Santos, Iolanda Araujo Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Diesel, Vivien
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Redes (Santa Cruz do Sul. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://online.unisc.br/seer/index.php/redes/article/view/14683
• topic: Sistemas de inovação. Políticas Públicas. Agricultura familiar. Piscicultura.; Innovation systems; Public Policies; Family Farming; Pisciculture.; Sistemas de innovación. Politicas publicas. Agricultura familiar. Piscicultura.

In this article we propose to reflect about the dynamics of innovation in agriculture at the local level, paying attention to the interface of differentiated knowledge and innovation systems (formal and informal). For this, we based on the description of a case of structuring a local innovation system for the introduction of pisciculture in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul (RS). The data analyzed in the survey were collected, essentially, through interviews with farmers and local technical assistance agents. Changes in the innovation system configuration were observed as farmers' organizations were formed and gained power in the fish farming professionalization project. Despite the effort to use technical knowledge for standardize the fish farming systems, a high heterogeneity was observed. We tend to suppose that this heterogeneity derives from farmers agency that “fit” pisciculture into their socio-productive strategies in different ways, adopting an adaptive logic that fosters the constant renewal of technological formats. Such dynamics tend to be realized by hybridization of technical-scientific and local knowledge.