A Educação agrícola superior e as necessidades do desenvolvimento rural dos países da América Latina.

Abstract

The complete sucess o£ models for rural development is the dependence of human resources, mainly at the university level. This distinguishes the importance of the development of agrarian sciences professionals as agents of action and changes in the rural area of the Latin American Countries. In particular for Brazil, the agricultural higher education has a relevant role in the deve lopment of experts capable of changing the agriculture in under taking ecologically stable, economically lucrativa and socially just. The rural development of Latin American Countries must be considered as a process of application of adequate measures to use better the natural and human resources, that answer to the requirements of reaching the best economical efficience as the means for having social justice. A big problem for reaching the rural economical and social development is to identify the type of education that must be offered, apt to synthetize a new man. Such education should not constitute a divergence between technology and humanism, but complementary parts towards a new hu manism that integrates as a coherent whole, the culture, scientific and technological formation besides a social and economical application. The agrarian sciences, professional will have to be an agent of changes who will act in many sectors of the society, fa cing and having to adapt him self to action in social leveis, from the rural society to the higher organizaiional struetures of the goverment being necessary to the professional technological knowledge humanistic culture. What type of professional is necessary to form? The answer requires adequate study that covers from the goverment in terests to the personal interests of those who work in rural so ciety in Brazil, the subject was widely discussed, and it was con cluded that the formation must be cpened, not finished, in other words, a professional trainable for any funetion. A seminar held in Viçosa, in 1982, concluded that it must be formed the professional for the work, not the job. It was also concluded that the professional must have a generic formation, whith a solid knowledge in the basic sciences and emphasis in the areas of social knowledge, in order to make his professional work broader and to increase the options of jobs. It should be pointed out the need for a continuous and permanent dialogue o£ the expert with the producer in order to create in the agriculture, a professional nucleus with a new vision of the agricultural reality, and specially of the role of the rural producer in the process of the change of that reality. The educational process for the agrarian professional must have the goa] of forming a professional apt to change the rural society, according to social, economical, political cultural and ecological objectives. It is necessary to stop the formation of professionals on ly for the profitable sector of the agriculture, and the educatio nal process should built, in the same man, the capacity to support the low profit agriculture, allowing to the professional the opor tunity to know the rural reality where he must do his work. The rural development of the Latin American Countries be comes every day more urgent in order to find the means to elimina te their poverty, the sub consumption standards and marginal condi tions, incompatible in the humanity cultural evolution and.the scientific and techonologlcal development. The role of the agricultural education is important to push the rural development and is must observ the goals of a liberating education, that leads to the dialogue, to the critic reasoning, and to the understanding of ali aspects of the whole li fe of the rural communities of the Latin American Countries.