Women, no matter their age, have been the bearers and guardians of social and biological diversity in the Santareno Plateau. Particularly in areas pressured by the expansion of soy plantations linked to high deforestation levels as well as to the intensive use of agrotoxins, they are the ones crafting and designing a territory based economy that save seeds, keep bees and nurture soils against the perverse impacts of monocultural ways of producing. As part of our methodology for reading and understanding the social and ecological landscape of this disputed plateau where more than five thousand small hold farmers thrive to keep on existing, we prepared along with women ‘maps of life where we first walked through their hardships and achievements, their work and hopes for land. Then, we aligned the walks to the talks and along extended conversations, we traced conjectural and structural analysis about their territory though conversations. Those conversations were turned into the maps of life that are a step to design a future without the harmful social and ecological effects of soy plantations. In this video, you can literally have an overview of the vegetable beds collectively designed for women smallholder farmers to keep their lands and economic dignity.
