Agroecology-a food production and consumption model that integrates ecological, social, and economic sustainability principles-underwent a period of significant growth in recent years in Argentina. Acquiring specialized knowledge about agroecology practices is a priority for farmers who pursue socio-environmental goals, but the process for building such expertise is not clearly laid out. While some consensus exists among agroecology practitioners about key guiding principles, institutionalized knowledge about agroecology is often insufficient, inadequate, and/or contested. Further, due to a long-standing history of state support for agribusiness-a model in many ways antithetical to agroecology-agroecology practitioners are wary of institutional knowledge that may not align with their socio-environmental principles. This raises the central question of this paper: how do farmers interact with institutions to generate agroecology expertise while navigating alignments between institutional knowledge and agribusiness? Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with agroecology farmers, state workers, activists, and technicians in an agricultural town in C & oacute;rdoba, Argentina, this paper examines how agroecology expertise is built among farmers. The article argues by way of empirical demonstration that expertise surges through what I term a work of discernment- a dynamic process involving the evaluation and selective combination of institutional and occupational knowledge, based on perceived alignment of priorities and goals. The paper draws from literature on expertise construction and dissemination and theorizes work of discernment as a strategy employed by non-institutional actors to generate specialized knowledge.
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