Fátima Costa, farmer, agricultural worker, and member of Cooperativa Integral A Geradora – Póvoa do Concelho, Trancoso, Guarda

Fátima Costa, a native of Póvoa do Concelho, in the municipality of Trancoso, Guarda district, has a life marked by her connection to the land and agricultural work. When she left school at an early age, she started farming with her parents, growing potatoes, chestnuts, and rye, at a time when “we harvested a lot of rye”. She was widowed at 38, with three school-age children, and faced considerable challenges. For a few years, she worked in the Rohde shoe factory, which later closed. She also cared for her sick mother for more than a decade, without any support or help. “I had to get my hands on life,” she says. Today, aged 61, she continues to farm.

Fátima has always cultivated a small vegetable garden, essentially for her consumption, with a little olive grove and corn on the land that belonged to her father. In her case, small-scale farming isn’t viable for generating a living income: “There’s very little to sell, for a person in miniature, it’s not enough.” The exception is chestnuts, a high-quality product in great demand. However, even here she faces challenges: she sells to middlemen and regrets that “the poor labourer gets the least; they could pay us a bit more, but they don’t.”

Despite the difficulties, she still has an appreciation for farming: “Farming is something I enjoy. It’s good to eat more natural food, to make it for ourselves.” She avoids the use of chemicals as much as possible, especially when producing for her own consumption, although she recognises that on a large scale they are almost indispensable due to the lack of labour.

Fátima learnt to farm from her mother and remembers farming techniques from the past, such as cultivating rye near the barrocos (large stones in the landscape), where rainwater was retained, improving production. “It’s around the barroco that you get the biggest ears.” However, she stopped growing rye because the prices were not worth the effort.

She now supplements her income with seasonal “day labour”, in activities such as preparing vineyards and picking apples. She regrets the pay gap between men and women: “They do the same work and earn more than us.” Despite the protests of the women workers, this difference persists, with few farms paying the same for the same work. While women are paid 30-35 euros for 8 hours of work, men are paid 40-45 euros. “And if we get a pay rise, they clamour to earn more and they get it.”

Fátima found in the Integral Cooperative A Geradora, created in 2022, a space to share experiences and energise community activities. After a meeting on the role of rural women in agriculture, she began to closely follow the idea of forming a cooperative to sell the produce from their vegetable gardens, although the project is still in the process of being realised.

Among the Cooperativa Integral A Geradora’s initiatives in which she actively participates are hiking, organising lunches for the village, taking part in theater plays and being involved in the annual Broca Viva festival, which enlivens the unpopulated village of Broca. For Fátima, in contexts where “there are few people, some die, the new ones emigrate”, it’s essential to be involved in initiatives like these to promote socialising and strengthen community ties.

Fátima also realised a dream she considered unattainable: joining a folkloric dancing group. She had always loved dancing and enjoyed watching these groups, but had never had the chance due to working in the fields, in the factory and caring for her family. Now, she says proudly: ‘It was a dream that I realised, that I thought I would never achieve, but now I have.’

Regarding her territory, Fátima believes that the local authorities lack greater attention to the villages, starting with cleaning and maintenance. On a broader level, she advocates policies that value agricultural labour, eliminate wage disparities and promote the fair selling of production, so that small farmers can make a decent living from their work.