This paper is based upon the experience of the Núcleo de Estudos Integrados Sobre a Agricultura Familiar (NEAF) of the Universidade Federal do Pará, which includes four training programs: Master of Science, engineer, lower tertiary (associate) degree from the Castanhal agricultural training college, and continued education for extension workers. In view of the important changes in public policies and scientific progress in research about sustainable development and family farming (described elsewhere in this special issue), this article considers the development and dissemination of new skills for those involved in rural development and especially for extension workers and managers of development agencies (private or public). Training is not considered as a mere enhancement of research output here, but rather as a powerful means for research about the new skills and knowledge now or soon to be required for rural development. Frontiers between initial and continued training, like those between action and research and between scientific specialities, must be rethought, but not confused. New professional identities in this domain must be elaborated, especially for the agronomist involved with family farming. The new context of public policy in rural development in the Amazon region, since 1996 still induces traditional responses, such as patronage and paternalism, barely hidden behind new discourses about participation, citizenship, etc. But it has also provided the opportunity for original responses – which we call discrete innovations – to emerge in the field and to be partially recognised or institutionalised. Reconstruction of the skills and identities of practitioners such as agronomists should be linked to these discrete innovations, which research must detect and formalise.