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Abstract. BACKGROUND:While farming in France and generally in Europe is continuing to intensify, at the expense of its environmental sustainability, promising alternatives are emerging. OBJECTIVE: The processes whereby farmers change and transform their own work, to shift from an intensive mode of production to a self-sufficient and autonomous one, need to be formalized if we are to further our understanding of why and how these forms of sustainable farming activity emerge. METHODS:We use the development of professional worlds theory, a systemic representation of workers' activity, whereby their experience is formalized. This can be explained as the praxis 1 , conceptual and axiological underpinnings form a system with the object of the action. The development of a professional world is analyzed according to the evolution of its components and the search for pragmatic coherence within it. We analyzed professional transitions towards self-sufficient and autonomous mixed farming through a case study. RESULTS: Our findings showed that the transition is initiated by the discovery of the unthinkable, awareness of a discrepancy between what the farmers think and what they do, the appearance of problems, and the response to external constraints. Professional transition is a non-teleological and non-incremental process; it corresponds to a comparison with reality, and a resolution of difficulties. This process is stimulated by the use of artifacts instrumented by the farmers. CONCLUSION: New perspectives are opened up by this formalization of transitions, in terms of (i) support towards sustainable farming and (ii) the design of sustainable farming systems.

OBJECTIVE To systematize and analyze the evidence from qualitative studies that address the perception of Brazilian Community Health Agents about their work.METHODS This is a systematic review of the meta-synthesis type on the work of community health agents, carried out from the Virtual Health Library using the descriptors “Agente Comunitário de Saúde” and “Trabalho”, in Portuguese. The strategy was constructed by crossing descriptors, using the Boolean operator “AND”, and filtering Brazilian articles, published from 2004 to 2014, which resulted in 129 identified articles. We removed quantitative or quanti-qualitative research articles, essays, debates, literature reviews, reports of experiences, and research that did not include Brazilian Community Health Agents as subjects. Using these criteria, we selected and analyzed 33 studies that allowed us to identify common subjects and differences between them, to group the main conclusions, to classify subjects, and to interpret the content.RESULTS The analysis resulted in three thematic units: characteristics of the work of community health agents, problems related to the work of community health agents, and positive aspects of the work of community health agents. On the characteristics, we could see that the work of the community health agents is permeated by the political and social dimensions of the health work with predominant use of light technologies. The main input is the knowledge that this professional obtains with the contact with families, which is developed with home visits. On the problems in the work of community health agents, we could identify the lack of limits in their attributions, poor conditions, obstacles in the relationship with the community and teams, weak professional training, and bureaucracy. The positive aspects we identified were the recognition of the work by families, resolution, bonding, work with peers, and work close to home.CONCLUSIONS This review provided an overview of the difficulties and positive aspects that are present in the daily work of community health agents. Given this, we have raised two challenges. The first one refers to how public policy makers need to appropriation the research results and the second one refers to the need to invest in studies that are designed to generate solutions for the difficulties faced by community health agents in their work.

While plains favorable to agriculture are still dominated by specialized and intensive agriculture, self-sufficient mixed crop-dairy farming systems increasingly attract policy makers' and scientists' attention. Owing to their limited use of purchased inputs, they can contribute to reducing the environmental impact of agriculture. Furthermore, self-sufficient farming tends to be linked with a search for autonomy in decision-making, i.e., farmers developing their own technical reference framework. Such farming systems can thus also contribute to alternative development pathways of rural territories. In this paper, we analyze how ten intensive mixed crop-dairy farms have progressively evolved toward more self-sufficient and autonomous systems. Through formalizing farmers' transition in action, we identified 34 tools that the farmers implemented making them reflect on their farming system, shift socio-professional networks, reorganize work routines, and steer the evolution of their production practices. For example, they created temporary pastures in crop rotation, introduced rotational pastures, observed their herds to adjust their feed and keep the animals in good health, and they limited expenditures to manage their cash flow. Which tools were used and when they were used depends on what is meaningful to them at various stages of the transition. Our analysis of transitions in action has three original features: it is centered on the transition as perceived by the actors who experience and manage it; it proposes a long-term conceptualization of the dynamics of farming systems, based on the farmer's initiative and creativity; and it highlights tools implemented by farmers during the transition to self-sufficiency and autonomy.