ABSTRACT
Aiming at the maintenance of prominence of South Minas coffee culture in the national scenario, the state of Minas Gerais by means of its public institutions, has created a regional development program which consist in the formal channel for diffusion of information, innovations and technologies for the region. With that purpose, the Southern Minas Ambit of Coffee culture was established, which is designed to systematize and organize meetings in the area of coffee culture in the region, integrating the public institutions of research, teaching and extension, private institutions and the coffee farmers in the search for the following objectives: to meet the main problems concerning regional coffee growing. However, in spite of the importance of that program for the south region of the state of Minas Gerais, its management and performed services have not been analyzed yet. Therefore, this work was conducted with a view to evaluating this initiative of technology diffusion for rural development, a methodological approach being taken into account oriented by different research methods, analyzing and identifying the attitudes of the organizers, sponsors and of the behavior of the farmers in relation to that program. By that research, it was stressed that the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods proved to be an adequate and complementary approach to extract data and analyze the program under focus. Also, evidence was verified that the informal means of communication are the preferred, in which information and knowledge transfer occur with more ease from coffee farmer to coffee farmer by means of informal communication.
KEYWORDS
Rural development; Program management; Technology diffusion; Technology transfer; Coffee