Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

RAHMANN G & GODINHO D (Ed.) (2012): Tackling the Future Challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry.
Proceedings of the 2 nd OAHC, Hamburg/Trenthorst, Germany, Sep 12-14, 2012
Animal, husbandry, women, husbands, family
ELBA RIVERA URBINA 1 , VICTORIA LÓPEZ URBINA 2
1 Nueva Guinea, Región Autónoma Atlántico Sur, Nicaragua - elbarivera40@yahoo.com
Introduction
2 Santa Isabel del Pajarito, departamento Río San Juan, Nicaragua
Ecologically working smallholders in Southeast Nicaragua - as it happens in most farming families
all over the country – are confronted with the fact of low female participation in agriculture itself
and in organizing as farmers, with the only exception of farms which belong to a woman without
husband. This has a series of different reasons, which the self organized group "Mujeres Emprendedoras
1 15 de Octubre" 2 is trying to solve within the association Sano y Salvo - Safe and
Sound, Primera Asociación Campesina de Cultura y Producción Ecológicas en la Región Autónoma
del Atlántico Sur 3 . The traditional role in the Central American countryside is that the man does all
the outside work and contacts and communication, his work generates the food and the money income,
while the woman is responsible for maintaining the household, feeding the family and rising
the children: a role of service, without producing money.
The normal smallholder did not send his children to school, but if he did so, girls were normally not
included.
Methods and Materials
Education and Ecology
The solution for this given and widespread situation is based on a close together of education and
ecology. Many efforts have been made to change the school education level of the rural poor, many
of them just aiming at fighting illiteracy or - more recently - trying to put in practise the Millennium
Development Goal of "primary school for all", which in the countryside means "low quality" education.
The association Sano y Salvo tries to widen this vision by different means: environmental education
of the rural community is a permanent programme, accompanying the efforts of winning more
farming families for ecological agriculture. In close cooperation and alliance with schools, among
them a Montessori initiative, churches and NGOs Sano y Salvo tries to help motivating the public,
the state and the private education sector to do more, to think of quality education, necessary to
successfully tap the hidden potential of the rural youth.
Animal husbandry – more than "backyard economy"
From the very beginning the female engagement did not aim at the usual, limited "backyard economy",
but participate seriously in ecological agriculture, marketing and organization. These are several
challenges at once, which need also combined solutions and cannot be seen isolated. It must be
1
Women Entrepreneurs – a group initiative helped to get started and running by Triodos Bank, The
Netherlands, and SNKT, Enschede, The Netherlands.
2
"Día Mundial de la Mujer Rural", as created by the World Summit of Women, Ginebra, Switzerland.
3
"First Smallholders Association of Ecological Culture and Production in the Autonomous South Atlantic
Region of Nicaragua", founded November 27. 1998.
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