Ana Rita Sousa, former farmer at Monte Mimo, member at Cooperativa Integral de Odemira, and manager at Espaço Nativa – São Luís, Odemira, Beja

Ana Rita, originally from Oporto, graduated in Environmental Engineering and became involved in environmental activism from an early age through GAIA – Grupo de Ação e Intervenção Ambiental (Environmental Action and Intervention Group) and the Plataforma Transgénicos Fora (Transgenics Out Platform). In 2009, she moved to the Alentejo, settling in Monte Mimo, in Alvalade do Sado, maintaining her commitment to GAIA and campaigns against transgenics and for free seeds. She was also at the origin of the Seed Festival, which has been taking place for over 12 years.

Ana Rita had been familiar with the concept of agroecology since 2005, when she took part in debates on the subject in Granada, Spain. She had done training in permaculture and was involved in a community garden in Oporto. However, when she arrived in the Alentejo, she was faced with new challenges: ‘The hoe didn’t work, the seeds didn’t germinate… and then the Alentejo, where everything is flat.’ The first years were dedicated to building a foundation for her new life: the house, the land and adapting to the territory, while living the experience of motherhood: ‘it was learning everything and anything’.

In 2016, Ana Rita helped found the Cooperar Network, which began as a network of young mothers looking for solutions to their needs and evolved into a space for sharing knowledge about cultivation, construction, product transformation and water management, involving men, women, and kids. This network became an essential platform for consolidating agroecology as a practice, combining concepts and experiences that translated into concrete actions.

In 2017, the Cooperar Network created REPASTO – Participatory and Solidarity Recognition, a participatory guarantee system that brought ‘critical mass’ to agroecological practices. It was in this context that, at Monte Mimo, they identified the need to act in a more regenerative way on the water lines, implementing a water retention landscape that made it possible to produce fresh vegetables for sale.

In 2019, they began collaborating with AMAP – Associations for the Maintenance of Proximity Agriculture, supplying baskets of fresh produce directly to consumers. For four years, they produced food for around 20 families. However, the fast pace of vegetable production led them to take a break, although the experience was enriching. It allowed them to realise that agroecology is a long process of learning and adapting to the climate and the territory. The collaboration with AMAP also reinforced the social side of agroecology, promoting debate on how to share tasks and risks and make decisions collectively.

Ana Rita currently runs Espaço Nativa, a café, restaurant and grocery store that is part of the Odemira Integral Cooperative. This space favours local products and allows her to explore another facet of the food system: consumption. At the same time, it allows her to continue to be involved in the agroecological transition. The fact that the AMAP she was organising has continued with another producer has also shown that this is a resilient system, another characteristic of agroecology.

It was during the experience of motherhood that Ana Rita began to reflect deeply on the role of women and the meaning of caring. Motherhood brought her a slower, more intimate pace, linked to her body. Accustomed to an activist world where men and women share tasks, it was difficult for her to reconcile the desire to continue ‘doing the same thing with men’ and breastfeeding. This was a demanding but transformative process of self-discovery.

From this reflection, she created the Seed Festival with other mothers, a way of maintaining activism while looking after their babies. For Ana Rita, the act of caring is deeply linked to agroecology: it involves planning to reconcile life and work, being at the service of life and collectively building solutions to common needs. The networks she participates in, which are mainly run by women, highlight values such as the common good, unlike the large agricultural fairs and associations, mostly dominated by men, where the logic of ‘controlling resources’ and maximising economic power prevails.

Ana Rita denounces the invisibility of care work, especially in agriculture. ‘When you look at a producer couple, the woman, who spends more time planning, looking after the seeds or doing less visible tasks, is often not recognised as a producer.’ This recognition is essential to valorise the role of women in local food systems and in the rural world.

An advocate of collaborative local food systems, built from the bottom up, from the interconnection between practice and reflection, Ana Rita believes in networks that support ‘living systems’ and are at the ‘service of life’. One of her dreams and public policy proposals is to transform irrigated areas into water retention landscapes, promoting a logic of caring for the commons across the territory.