Blooming agroecological free territories: women resistance of Brazilian Northeast

Abstract

It´s already known that the current conventional indicators based solely on the economic aspect, or that value it to the detriment of other indicators, are not useful for explaining reality and supporting decision-making based on the principles of Agroecology. Especially when it comes to the maintenance work carried out by women in productive backyards. From this perspective, the general objective of this paper was to describe the construction and the systematization of monitoring indicators, the result of a selection of results of the Free Territories Project, called “Flor de Palma Forrageira”, the name of the methodological strategy that emerged within the scope of the execution of the project “Construction of territories free”, developed by Brazilian Agroecology Association (ABA-Agroecologia), with the support of the Heinrich Böll Brazil Foundation, in the states of Paraíba and Pernambuco, between August/2021 and September/2022. These indicators were named “Flor da Palma Forrageira”, given the importance of this plant for the backyards and lifestyles of the women involved. Prepared in a complex way, based on a theoretical basis of feminist and ecological economics, the indicators demonstrated aspects in which the community achieves autonomy and freedom, based on (re)existence, resilience and sovereignty over its territories and reverses negative impacts into positive ones, or minimize them, over time.