Between August and October 2022, based on their experience of Revolving Solidarity Funds to support the construction of economic autonomy for family farmers with a particular focus on women and young people, the Centre for Cultural Action (Centro de Ação Cultural: CENTRAC) ran the project “Economic solidarity generating autonomy for women from Paraíba’s semi-arid region,” which received funding from CESE’s Small Projects Programme. The project took place in the municipalities of Aroeiras and Campina Grande in Paraíba, and emerged from discussions about issues related to the dismantling of the federal government’s rural development policies.
CENTRAC’s experience of Revolving Solidarity Funds (RSF) with peasant families from a variety of locations in the Brazilian semi-arid region dates back years. The practice involves collectively managed community savings to strengthen family farming. “Here in Paraíba, within the region of the Agreste Leadership Forum (Fórum de Lideranças do Agreste: FOLIA), the model became particularly strong following the arrival of the Programme for Social Mobilization and Training for Coexistence with the Semi-arid (the One Million Cisterns Programme)” Patrícia Sampaio, CENTRAC Executive Coordinator, explained. According to Patrícia, the families established Revolving Funds at the beginning of the programme, in order to ensure that non-beneficiary families had a drinking water reservoir close to their homes.
“Although they were originally based on this need, because of the constant droughts in the region, RSFs have expanded, modified and taken shape as a strategy to help families remain in the countryside. Over the years, with the success of these experiences, family communities began to discuss other forms of support to improve their quality of life,” she explained. The methodology was used for other purposes, not only to build cisterns: they began to use the funds to build bathrooms; for loans to buy medications; to renovate houses; to purchase small animals; to build garden fences and construct social technologies, such as for water reuse, wire fencing for nursery gardens and agroecological stoves.
Patrícia added that “recently the RSFs have principally constituted a strategy for peasant women to meet the structural needs of their nursery gardens and their basic needs, such as home renovation, purchasing home appliances, to plough their land and purchase seeds to plant during the winter.” The CENTRAC initiative sought to support the agroecological gardens managed by these female farmers through the acquisition of native animals (capoeira hens), to improve the infrastructure of their gardens with wire fencing, and to adopt agroecological livestock practices, alongside training in agroecological handling and practices. This was designed to run in parallel with a strategy to raise the profile of women’s work within the family agroecosystem and in community organization.
The project prioritizes the purchase of animals from other female farmers, generating income and valuing the husbandry of native capoeira hens within the territory. Through this methodology, during the training for the groups of RSFs, it was also possible to determine which women/young people would receive the next financial transfers the women will make, depending on the animals received. Six RSFs were funded, two located in Aroeiras and four in Campina Grande. For each project fund, CENTRAC raffled off a small flock of eight mother hens and a native breeder, along with 25 meters of wire to fence the nursery gardens managed by the women.
The project also provided for the purchase of forage shredder to produce animal feed. According to Patrícia, “this equipment has facilitated the production of food for the small nursery animals, and contributed to the women’s autonomy in terms of external supplies, favouring food production based on the foraged plant species available within the family agroecosystem.”
The methodology involves the active participation of women and young people in discussions to understand how to choose animals and the importance of working with native breeds within the territory. In-service training provided support so that the women could make better choices in the future and identify, according to certain characteristics, which breeds are best adapted to the location, rather than the mixed breeds they often raise in their gardens/land, because of a lack of information. “The training workshops and exchanges were also very important points for the exchange of information with female farmers from other municipalities and different territories,” she added.
SOLIDARITY ECONOMY – This experience has taken root because it favours and expands the infrastructure in the nursery gardens where the women manage production and put their learning into practice, where agroecological knowledge is constructed, biodiversity is reproduced and where they guarantee food and nutritional security, generate income and ensure female autonomy. These funds are also thought to constitute an expression of the Solidarity Economy, since they are instruments of Solidarity Finance through which self-management is practiced; these are voluntary savings, where the funds circulate within the community and their restitution obeys the logic of solidarity and the rules of reciprocity.
In this sense, the CENTRAC partnership with CESE is a strategic component for the work’s feasibility. “CESE is a historic CENTRAC partner and has contributed decisively to the achievement of our institutional mission. CESE’s support has been of fundamental importance, in the way it has supported the empowerment of female farmers in the semi-arid region, strengthening community organization and the Solidarity Economy through rural solidarity funds. Moreover, the project has supported debates about the importance of creole (animal and vegetable) seeds and the current threats to their conservation, encouraging the groups to think about the construction of conservation strategies” Patrícia declared.
In her view, “this project arose from a particularly difficult situation due to a combination of negative factors: the systemic loss of rights promoted by the federal government and the devastating effects of the pandemic, which accentuated inequalities and which continues to reverberate in various sections of Brazilian society, particularly in our region. In this context, we counted, once again, on CESE’s solidarity; they understood the gravity of the situation and were willing to support us, which was hugely valuable for the work we do.”
Folia Women – The “Folia Women” collective is being set up; it will then enter participation arenas, such as Community Associations, Community Seed Banks and Revolving Solidarity Funds. The women will also be involved in the Catholic Church’s Social Pastorals, in the organization of fairs to commercialize their products and in the Municipal Councils for Sustainable Rural Development in their respective municipalities.
According to Patrícia, “based on their identification as Folia Women, they also participate in other coalitions, such as the ‘March for the Lives of Women and Agroecology’ which takes place annually in one of the territories in which the Semi-Arid Coalition of Paraíba (Articulação do Semiárido Paraibano: ASA-PB) operates, which Folia is also part of. They also actively participate in the March of the Margaridas and other mass mobilizations that address the issue of inequalities in gender relations and the empowerment of female farmers”.
Inclusion in the Folia Collective has also supported the women’s economic autonomy and raised their self-esteem, in that they can access training arenas and other opportunities (projects like this, supported by CESE) which strengthen the transition to agroecology, food and nutritional security, and coexistence with the semi-arid region.
CENTRAC – CENTRAC is involved in and links up with collective bodies, implementing its activities within the Agreste Leadership Forum (Fórum de Lideranças do Agreste: FOLIA), which brings together rural community leaders, associations, unions and family farmers from 16 municipalities in the Agreste Region in the state of Paraíba, including Aroreira and Campina Grande, the municipalities in which the CESE-supported project takes place.
FOLIA is one of the dynamic territories within the Semi-Arid Coalition of Paraíba (Articulação do Semiárido Paraibano: ASA-PB), which was set up in response to the great drought of 1993 and of which CENTRAC is a founding member. The ASA-PB works in 07 territories, on themes implemented through working groups (water, seeds, animal husbandry, commercialization, Revolving Solidarity Funds, Women and Young People), which, for their part interact collaboratively with the Semi-Arid Coalition of Brazil (Articulação do Semiárido Brasileiro), established in 1999.
The goal of these arenas is to reflect on the semi-arid region in Paraíba and Brazil while at the same time seeking solutions to their problems from an agroecological perspective and through the construction, proposition and implementation of public policies in order to coexist with the region. Such coexistence is based on the construction of agroecological knowledge, Popular Education and the Solidarity Economy, and addresses themes such as conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity, focused on creole seeds, female protagonism, food sovereignty and security, the supply and social construction of markets, access to and management of the waters, the issue of pesticides and genetically modified seeds, and communications.
CENTRAC considers these arenas to be important to the debate about alliances and the mobilization of political support to strengthen the participatory implementation of public policies, building the institutional conditions for coalition and supporting the increased integration of activities aimed at sustainable rural development, one based, therefore, on agroecology and on a fair, solidarity economy with increased participation by women.