Mission and Objective

Mission:

To enhance the sustainable rural development project of Rio de Janeiro, using the scientific and technological tools of Agroecology.

Objective:

To train and qualify professionals working in technical assistance, research, and rural extension to understand the structure, functioning, and management of agroecological systems. It integrates the concepts and principles of ecology and social sciences so that, using the criteria and parameters of Agroecology and through a multidisciplinary approach, it can qualify the agents promoting sustainable rural development.

Vision:

The MPADRS presents a polysemic vision of science in connection with socio-political movements that mobilize different networks of actors involved in promoting the sustainable development of family farming. To this end, it adopts a systemic vision, transdisciplinarity, participatory approaches, and action research, including the construction of dialogue between peasant knowledge and academic scientific knowledge.

Value Generated:

The prevailing conception of family and peasant farming remains one of a subordinate link to conventional agribusiness, where specific research programs are conducted to organize technologies and production systems to increase the efficiency of family farming and incorporate small producers into agribusiness, ensuring improvements in their income and well-being. The lack of development in family farming is conceived as a failure to adopt the available technological packages. The MPADRS presents a countervailing value, based on the conviction that, beyond specialized scientific progress, an interdisciplinary approach is necessary. We must not hide the risk of a scientific advance being considered the only possible approach to understanding an aspect of life, society, and the world. On the contrary, an investigator who advances fruitfully in their analysis, but is equally willing to recognize other dimensions of the reality they investigate, thanks to the work of other sciences and knowledge, opens themselves to knowing reality in a more complete and integral way.

Scientific activities in the MPADRS will be carried out within a universe of historically situated values, while the ethical and social values of dominant agricultural science are mostly based on control, appropriation of nature, and material progress. On the other hand, through agroecology, family farmers, indigenous peoples, and organized traditional communities position their research beyond mere agroecosystem management techniques, finding values in the field of social justice, sustainability, and food sovereignty.

A central aspect of the MPADRS is to propose a plural scientific approach rooted in the valorization of local knowledge, which allows agroecology not to restrict its research problems to those compatible with the internal limits of a given paradigm. Thus, the set of social values generated by the MPADRS makes agroecology a research strategy that encompasses sustainability, food sovereignty, social justice, feminism, and the strengthening of local actors and organizations. These are values that compete with those guiding the approach that predominates in institutionalized agricultural research.

The extension, teaching, and research conducted in the MPADRS take into account the context in which the objects and phenomena of study and their social actors are immersed. Thus, the core of cognitive values, precisely because this is a strategy of contextualized teaching, research, and extension, takes into account the local knowledge of farmers. These characteristics enable the exploration of areas of knowledge intentionally left uncovered or methodologically unattainable by decontextualized research strategies. In this sense, research in agroecology aimed at sustainable rural development is not synonymous with—nor restricted to—research on organic or agroecological production systems (or those in transition), although it naturally includes these. It constitutes a scientific investigation strategy with the potential to be applied to the study of any system of food, fiber, and energy production, and natural resource management.

MPADRS research aimed at sustainable rural development is based on the following values:
(i) Epistemological (mutual reinforcement of academic and local knowledge),
(ii) Methodological (plural and participatory),
(iii) Sustainability, food sovereignty, and social justice,
(iv) Autonomy (not governed by the interests of governments or funders), and
(v) Strengthening of social sectors whose perspectives are not prioritized by dominant institutional science.