Congresso Brasileiro de Agroecologia

As my internship is implemented in the scope of Agroecology, I first of all got introduced to the agroecology movement in Brazil. After I had a week to arrive in Vicosa, to get familiar with the culture and the people, I went to the agroecology conference in Brasilia, together with my supervisor.

I need to admit that I did not learned much about agroecology before I came to Brazil. At my university in the Netherlands, I visit the crop production domain, however I did not yet learn much about alternative agricultural systems. In my first year at my university I implemented an internship at a crop production farm, which is mainly organic and I learned a lot of the farming practices. Besides I read a lot about farming and after I have worked on a project with a biodynamic farmer and a farmer which has established an agroforestry system,

 I was always very interested to learn more about these alternative food production systems. Especially after seeing the food forest in the Netherlands, I was curious to see how such systems would look like in another country, where they produce completely different plants. Another reason was, that I would like to see how products, such as fruits which are so largely exported from Brazil and other countries to Europe, can be produced in a sustainable manner. At last, I wanted to see how the culture and the structure of organization is affecting agroecology in Brazil.

With all these thought in my mind, I went to my first agroecology conference, which was all in in all very overwhelming and an inspiring experience. The travel to Brasilia was very long, but I managed to sleep in the bus which helped me to kill some time. Together with my supervisor, we arrived in Brasilia in the morning, from where we took a UBA to the congress. This was the first official day of congress and we arrived in time to watch the opening ceremony. My first thought was, that it is a huge movement, which includes people from a lot of different backgrounds, such as students, farmers, policy makers, volunteers, indigenous people, nutritionist, activists etc. This first impression make me think that it is a very powerful movement with a lot of energy. During the coming days, I mainly spend my time visiting presentations, which was a bit difficult as my Portuguese was very terrible at this stage, and all the presentations were held in Portuguese. Anyways, I thought it was a great experience and I especially liked the little market where people sold a lot of interesting products including food, jewelry, instruments, cloth and much more. I therefore got to know a lot of new products and I learned for example that you can further process the flower of the banana tree.

Every day we ate something different at the little market and in the evening, they had mostly live music, which was beautiful. I furthermore got to see my friend, who I am studying with in the Netherlands, where I was very happy about. What I especially noticed was that they stand a lot for women rights in agriculture, emphasizing the importance of women in agriculture.

Demonstration 

Youth movement discussing

Standing up for women rights!

Meeting my brasilian friend in Brasilia! 

On the last day they had a demonstrating where they walked on the street and yelled things in the microphone and sang together. The atmosphere was very warm, people played music, talked, discussed and shared the same energy. Overall, I believe that the congress was a great way to first get introduced to the Brazilian culture and to see how strong this movement of agroecology is. It’s really inspiring for me to see how many different people were involved and I was amazed how many young people have been there. I believe that this is very important as I believe that you need youth for sustainable agriculture to bring in new thought and ideas and continue sustainable farming practices for the coming generations. At the end it was a bit depressing that I could not catch everything they have said during the congress, but I anyways learned a lot and I will remember this experience. It also motivated me to learn more about agroecology 😊