The Brazilian National Rural Learning Service (SENAR) provides producers and rural workers with Rural Professional Training, Social Promotion Activities, Secondary Level Technical Education, and Technical and Managerial Assistance for several productive activities.
For 30 years, SENAR has provided all these free actions for thousands of Brazilians living in the countryside, with the goal of professionalizing them in farming activities and improving the quality of life of the producers assisted by the entity. SENAR is the countryside school, where technologies are applied effectively in agriculture and livestock activities, besides working in climate resilience and mitigating actions in projects aimed at sustainability.
SENAR’s Technical and Managerial Assistance (ATeG) has an innovative model for attending rural producers through a methodology based on the managerial and productive knowledge of the rural properties being attended to, focused on productive activities and implemented during a 24-month-period.
ATeG is based on five actions that affect the whole process to be applied in developing the field services. Initially, a farmer-specific productive diagnosis of the productive activity is performed. Based on these data, annual planning is carried out, in which technicians and producers set goals and objectives. The technological adequacy stage is conducted through guidelines conveyed by the field technicians, to improve the managerial and technical process of the activities. After a 12-month cycle of assistance, a systematic assessment of the results is undertaken, which functions as a basis for decision-making for the next year of ATeG.
Throughout the whole attending period, the producers receive complementary training on several agricultural subjects with the aim of improving processes and helping the implementation of technologies.
The most relevant impact of SENAR’s Technical and Managerial Assistance in the producers’ life is the training process carried out in the field, through the knowledge conveyed to them and their families about their productive activities, as well as the awareness that their properties are rural companies, and like any company, they must generate income and profit.
Another changing action provided by ATeG is family succession, in which we can see young people staying in and going back to the countryside and working on the farms with their families.
This year, ATeG turns 10 and has already changed the lives of more than 200 thousand rural producers in Brazil, in 31 productive activities, besides providing job opportunities for agricultural science professionals through offering services in the field.
Rural producers interested in taking part in ATeG can get in touch with the rural producers union nearest to their city or SENAR in their state. Besides ATeG, SENAR offers professional training courses in more than 300 careers in rural areas and social promotion actions in the field.
Luana Frossard Gomes de Aguiar is the Project Operationalization Coordinator at SENAR