Institutionalization of the Agroecological Approach in Brazil: Advances and Challenges

This article sketches a brief panorama of the advances and challenges involved in the implementation of the agroecological approach in Brazilian institutions. It begins with an account of the struggles of rural social movements working at the deepest grassroots level of the country's “agroecological field.” The processes that led to the creation and development of the National Agroecology Alliance (ANA) and the Brazilian Agroecology Association (ABA-Agroecologia) are presented as a key part of the construction now under way. Taking as a baseline the evolutions in the internalization of agroecology in official teaching, research, and rural extension services, the article identifies some of the powerful practical, theoretical, and politico-ideological obstacles preventing the rupture with the paradigm of modernization on the part of state institutions.