ACREUNA/ORIZONA, Brazil, Aug 26 (IPS) – A community bakery, family production of fruit pulp and the rehabilitation of water sources are some of the initiatives of the Energy of Women of the Earthwhich has been organized since 2017 in the state of Goiás, in the center-west of Brazil.
A common resource is non-conventional renewable energy sources, such as solar energy and biomass. These are fundamental to the economic viability and environmental sustainability of the projects.
The network is made up of 42 women’s organizations in 27 municipalities in Goiás, a state that, like the entire central-western region, has an economy dominated by large-scale monoculture agriculture, mainly soybeans, corn, sugar cane and cotton.
It is an unfavorable context for small-scale family farming, due to low population density and distant urban markets. A movement to strengthen the sector has intensified in this century, with the Agro Centro-West Family Farming Fairs promoted by local universities.
There are 95,000 family farms in Goiás, 63% of the total number of farms in the state.
“The network is the link between the valuation of rural women, family farming and energy transition,” Gessyane Ribeiro, an agronomist who coordinates the project that uses alternative energy sources to empower women in agricultural production, told IPS.
The Women of the Earth Energy project, which generated the network, is promoted by Gepaaf, a company known by the Portuguese abbreviation of its name, Management and development of projects in consultancy for family farmingand born from a study group at the Federal University of Goiás.
Thanks to non-repayable financing from Caixa Economica Federal, a state bank focused on social and housing support, the company, in collaboration with two institutions and the university, was able to carry out actions with 92 women farmers and 60 family projects and set up another 16 collective projects until June 2023.
In Acreúna, a municipality of 21,500 inhabitants, 14 female farmers run a bakery that supplies a variety of breads, pastries, cakes and cookies to local public schools, which have about 3,000 students. They are women from the Genipapo settlement, where 27 families received plots of land from the government’s land reform program.
Solar energy made the settlement’s Residents’ Association’s enterprise viable, along with primary schools in nearby towns. The National School Feeding Programme requires beneficiary schools to allocate at least 30% of their purchases to family farming.
In Orizona, a municipality with 16,000 inhabitants, Iná de Cubas received a biodigester and eight solar panels, which generate biogas and electricity for the production of fruit pulp, including for school meals.
Another technology spread by the project, the solar pump, has restored and preserved one of the springs that form a stream in Orizona. The equipment, powered by solar energy, pumps water from the spring to a pond owned by Nubia Lacerda Matias, where her cows quench their thirst.
In the past, animals went directly to the source, polluting the water and damaging the surrounding forest. The area was fenced off, protecting both the water and the vegetation, which grew and became denser, benefiting the people living downstream.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
