As sustainable agriculture turns in fashion, it becomes a contested territory between social movements and institutionality. In this article I analyze how three popular imaginaries around farming are entangled in the institutionalization of farming training programs, as spaces where sustainable agriculture is taught and enacted. These imaginaries relate to the lack of farmers, the responsibilization of farming heroes, and the social value of sustainable agriculture. Using a case study approach, I show how initiatives are molded by imaginaries that (re)construct and (re)define them as they get inserted into formal structures of funding, regulation, and dissemination. The inherited imaginaries are adopted—and adapted—by organizations both unconsciously and strategically. I also untangle how a politics of imaginaries unfolds as the popular social imaginaries about farming are contested and negotiated on the ground by staff members and apprentices.

随着可持续农业变得时尚，它成为社会运动和制度性之间有争议的领域。在这篇文章中，我分析了围绕农业的三种流行想象如何与农业培训计划的制度化相结合，作为教授和实施可持续农业的空间。这些想象与农民的缺乏、农业英雄的责任以及可持续农业的社会价值有关。使用案例研究方法，我展示了倡议是如何被想象塑造的，当它们被插入到正式的资金、监管和传播结构中时，这些想象（重新）构建和（重新）定义它们。组织无意识地和战略性地采用并适应了继承的想象。