Popular extension and agroecology in times of pandemics

health, territories and solidarity economy in the construction of formative spaces and other possible futures

Abstract

The article analyzes the course “Agroecology and Pandemic: reflections on the present and other possible futures” as an experience on the role of agroecology in the current context, in which contradictions of the capitalist model are enhanced by the health crisis of Covid-19. The course was promoted by the “SoFiA” program of popular extension and scientific dissemination, of the Federal Center of Technological Education of Minas Gerais (CEFET-MG). The Brazilian inequalities, linked to the productive model hegemonized by agribusiness, were problematised together with the processes of social vulnerability and increased hunger. Agroecology has become a space for bringing together people and groups to build an agenda of transformations based on cooperative practice and in favour of popular, traditional and ancestral knowledge that is largely invisible. The text includes: background on extensionist practices; methodological processes based on horizontal dialogues for the conception, execution and analysis of the course results from its axes, the challenges imposed by social distance and the reconfiguration of agroecological work in the virtual environment; discussion of results. The conclusions point out that it was possible to provide a meeting place in which extensionist practice could constitute itself as a group agglutinator in defense of food sovereignty, democracy and human emancipation.