 Congratulating Rural Women with a Reflection:
by Dr. Leidy Casimiro*
In Cuba, women make up only 25% of the active rural population, a fact which reveals how little incentive there is today to work and live in the countryside. This adversely affects the ability to promote family farming based on agroecological practices. A good starting point to change this would be an agroecological movement as a national project.
A feminine design is needed for today’s countryside to see a return of love and intelligence. It should center, for the first time, the taste, needs and expectations of Cuban women and families. Now, the countryside has to exceed the expectations that the city created many years ago.
From my experience, it is a privilege to be a rural woman in Cuba; our family life is very economical because we produce most of what we consume through family strength and creativity; the use of the energy from the sun, the wind, water, and biomass; and with the vision of agroecology. All of this forms a compendium of actions that make us practically invulnerable to changing times.
Although not all women necessarily interpret it this way at this time, carrying out agroecology and permaculture design on a resilient family farm can be a way to achieve economic and spiritual growth… and even to have fun.
The country requires public policies and concrete actions that foster an agroecological cultural movement at all levels. We need to train and prepare families to start a wave of movement back to the countryside, full of satisfaction and motivation, not only for food production, but also for other non-agricultural activities that strengthen country-city relationships.
It is crucial to improve rural infrastructure and services - including water access, home improvements, roads, public transport, communications, access to information technologies and recreational activities - so that campesino families can experience a quality of life similar or even higher than those in urban populations.
It is necessary to empower rural women, facilitating their equitable involvement in decision-making. We must also encourage the participation of young women and men in agriculture through supporting them in accessing land, property, and productive resources, and by taking a comprehensive approach to their needs so that they may be motivated to build a family life, based on agroecology, in the countryside.
From an economic perspective, it is necessary improve the prices that campesino families receive for their products, so that income is never lower than production costs. This should be done even if subsidies are necessary, because domestic markets, prosperity and happiness need to be strengthened. It is also important to promote short-chain marketing and the acquisition of appropriate technologies at fair prices so that farm families can better supply unsatisfied local markets with high quality and good prices.
This would be part of the path to Food Sovereignty in Cuba ...
*Leidys Casimiro holds and PhD in agroecology and her family runs the Finca del Medio, a model of sustainable family farming in Central Cuba.
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