Making agriculture more sustainable is a challenge, especially for family farming and peasantries. Their innovation and participation processes to become an agent of their own development are particularly decisive, as they are often conceived as marginalized people. Some efforts sought to address these challenges : some for supporting farmers in innovation generation, others for enabling rural people to better organize themselves and influence institutions' actions. Some studies about devices built for improving farmer innovation (Hocdé, 1998; Van de Fliert & al, 2007) point out that these experiences may drive them, in some conditions, to assert themselves as protagonist actors : building of common values and visions, emergence of subjects more self-confident, taking in charge the collective interest, etc. Following these observations, we analyse effects produced by support methods for farmer innovation in Brazilian semi-arid north-east, in Agreste of Paraiba's State. How devices which seek to facilitate farmer innovation can appreciate and activate rural people's abilities to organize themselves and lead their own development processes ? To address this question, our study looks at a support program which intends to develop farmers' agroecological experimentations. Two organizations lead this project : a family farmers' union federation in Borborema Territory, the Pólo Sindical, and an ONG, the As-Pta (Family Farming and Agroecology). In this family farming region, with both smallholding and large scale units, rural communities remain in exclusion and domination situation. Program's actors use diverse methods and processes, such as appraisals (Rapid and Participatory Agroecosystem Appraisal), support devices for farmers' experimentation (training, exchange visits, systematisation and sharing of knowledge), solidarity revolving funds and community seed bank (Sabourin, 2007). These actions aim to guide farming systems intensification strategies, through producti