Agroecological Logbooks and women from the semiarid holding hands and strengthening agroecology: results of the use of logbooks in the projects supported by IFAD in Brazil from August 2019 to February 2020

Abstract

In a notebook format, the Agroecological Logbook has four columns to organize information on the women’s production. It serves to record what was sold, donated, exchanged and consumed on a daily basis, taking into account everything that is cultivated in the areas tended by women in family and small farming productive units, from agricultural production to handicrafts and processing. The Agroecological Logbook was created as a political-pedagogical tool for training rural women. Its first aim is to “empower” women by giving visibility to and raising awareness of their work’s importance, allowing them to perceive the relevance of their participation in their family’s production and income generation, thus contributing to increase women’s autonomy. But, as soon as the first returns of the records appeared, showing surprising partial results for the women and the project team, the Logbook proved to be an efficient tool for monitoring and valuing the women’s almost invisible production for self-consumption, exchange, donation and sale.