Education and Agroecology in the Brazilian northeast
Yasmin Dahnoun
Bringing together culture, community and ecological education, RAIN’s collaboration with Pe da Vida in the Northeast of Brazil weaves together indigenous knowledge and scientific awareness surrounding sustainable agriculture. This education initiative aims to revive traditional approaches to farming by inspiring urban students to draw connections between their land, water, resources and food.
Agroecology is a form of agriculture that works with nature, rather than against it. The use of food forests sustained civilisations for thousands of generations before colonisation brought monoculture and mass industrialised farming to Latin America. In fact, it's thought that the very nature of large areas of the Amazon has been shaped by agroforestry!
The rich, diverse forests of Brazil have always been an abundant source of food, medicine and materials for building and crafting. Through displacement, urbanization and violence against indigenous communities, a lot of this knowledge has been lost alongside huge tracts of forest. This process of destruction continues with many acres cleared each day to make way for soya farming and ranching.
Pe da Vida’s project is a step towards reviving this knowledge and drawing together urban centres and rural farmers.
RAIN partnered with Pe da Vida to support this growing community with direct sponsorship to build resources at EREM Cândido Duarte school. The project included installing a geodesic seedling nursery, with capacity to produce 70 native tree seedlings per year, including guava, pitanga and mulungu.
They also built an agroforestry system, to demonstrate this form of regenerative agriculture while growing vegetables. The construction of an open air-class room, and part of the project is to find new ways to integrate ecology into curriculum. The students studied maths and physics as they were installing the irrigation system
RAIN is working on partnerships between schools in the UK and Brazil. If you are a parent, teacher or student, please get in touch!
