“We are feminists and ecologists in the rural world, agroecofeminism is for us the place where these axes cross”
- Driven by the feminist group of Aramaio, a meeting on agro-ecofeminism was held in Álava on March 4. About 35 women from different places in Euskal Herria joined the initiative under the motto “alternative to the system that destroys land and life”. They reflected on the reductive projects and their impact on the rural environment and the lives of women, as well as on the alternatives that from feminism, environmentalism and the countryside can emerge in the face of this devastating model.
“Thinking about what to organize on March 8, we came to the forefront of the projects of wind power plants at the height of the people, and we saw the need to address it from a feminist perspective,” said Irati Mujika Larreta. Most members of the feminist group are ecologists and although they do not live from agriculture, as rural citizens, they feel close to this rural world and "agro". “Our intention is to broaden the perspective: we live in the countryside, we are feminists, ecologists. Well, we understand agroecofeminism as a place where all these axes cross,” he says.
The objective of the meetings has been to gather and publicize the voices of women who live in rural areas and are threatened by macro-projects through the Basque Country. “We have many tiny projects: speculation of agricultural land in Lapurdi, macroines and giant greenhouses in Navarra, wind power plant projects in Gipuzkoa…” Mujika has recalled that over the past 30 years, as a result of speculation and artificialization, more than 80,000 hectares of agricultural land have been lost in Euskal Herria: “If these projects are analyzed in megawatts and similar ones, we have wanted to measure according to their impact on lives, relationships and oppression”.
Need to work alternatives
The workshop addressed issues such as agroecology and food sovereignty, decolonality, growth, production and consumption habits, etc. “On all these issues we need to make criticism and self-criticism, to ask ourselves what we need to live with dignity and how we will achieve it.”
With the ideas that have emerged in the meeting, members are now forming a joint declaration, and with a view to the future they intend to organize more meeting spaces and continue to create alternatives. “We saw the need for critical mass to continue working on the contents of the workshop and to reunite in a broader meeting,” Mujika explains. It stresses that the maintenance of large cities today requires a sacrifice of the rural environment, to which it will be necessary to continue to create and foster alliances between feminist women and rural environmentalists.
