Language, social recognition, and rural innovation in the context of family farming in the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais

Abstract

Based on applied qualitative research grounded in action research methodology, this study analyzes the managerial, productive, and technological conditions of family farming in the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The results indicate low managerial maturity, strong dependence on public institutional purchasing policies, and incipient access to productive modernization and digital inclusion. These elements are interpreted as manifestations of a linguistic gap between peasant knowledge and the technical-bureaucratic languages required by public policies and markets, constituting forms of symbolic exclusion and structural violence. It is argued that family farming, although central to food security, remains marginalized as an epistemic and social subject. It is concluded that overcoming these inequalities requires interdisciplinary and rural extension approaches that integrate productive, managerial, and digital inclusion as constitutive dimensions of human rights and rural development.