Abstract
This text aims to discuss undergraduate education in the field of agronomy. The authors' perspective is to approach agronomic education as part of a process that legitimizes, accumulates and produces the knowledge needed to sustain the techno-industrial society. As such, it is in conflict with alternative approaches. In the case of agronomy formal education, the most challenging alternative approach is agroecology. We tried to characterize the space occupied by agroecology topics throughout the agronomy curriculum which we knew was limited. We analyzed the scarcity of these topics, expressed in the pedagogic projects and curricula of undergraduate programs in public universities of the state of São Paulo, supported by ideas about the social and scientific paradigmatic transition. We found that the agronomy programs are based on a reasoning that legitimizes a model of rural development which is socially and environmentally unsustainable. Although the transition to the sustainability is urgent, universities keep educating agronomists to preserve the present system of unsustainable agriculture as the only possible practice. Our data and reflections point that, although the present day social and environmental issues are declared into the politic-pedagogical projects and other formal statements of the universities, it is not present within the curriculum. Changes in the programs´ paradigms should be expressed within the politic-pedagogical documents, in the university perspective and concurrently within the pedagogical methods, and the practices of teaching, research and extension. Such changes require a deep and democratic debate among professors, staff, students and society, in such a way that the political-pedagogical project would be able to manifest the plurality of voices involved.
Key words; Agroecology; Sustainability; University
