Analysis of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (ATER) in municipalities of Cariri cearense

A view on the Municipal Secretaries of Agriculture

Abstract

Technical assistance and rural extension are essential services in the process of sustainable rural development and in the autonomy of agricultural and livestock activities, playing a key role in the teaching-learning process, communication and implementation of new technologies generated by research, and diverse knowledge , primordial to the rural development in the broad sense and, specifically, to the development of agricultural activities. The study in question was developed in the year two thousand and eighteen in the cities of Antonina do Norte, Campos Sales, Crato and Juazeiro do Norte, and had as objective to characterize the agriculture secretariats as to their structure, developed projects, planning and human resources , through semi-structured questionnaires applied to the managers of the secretariats. Through the study, structural and operational limitations for carrying out technical assistance and rural extension (ATER) were analyzed, as well as the follow-up of projects developed by the secretariats. Planning has fundamental importance in the actions and the engagement of the farmers in the projects, but some secretariats do not do it together with the farmers and others do not carry out planning, thus compromising the good functioning. It can be concluded from the study that most of the secretariats under analysis have a limited and consequently inefficient structure to work with ATER, given their structural and operational deficiencies.