Mujeres del Terreno - Women of the Land

Part of the Pachamama Oral History Project

funded by THE BIG WE FOUNDATION’S SHESTORIES GRANT

Small scale farmers produce a third of the world’s food. With today’s rising world population, we depend on farmers more than ever.

Yet, women and femme farmers disproportionately face barriers in agriculture with heavy histories of sexism and rising climate change impacts on their way of life. Women and Femme Stories matter.

Mujeres del Terreno - Women of the land is part of the Pachamama Oral History Project, and is made possible by funding from The BIG We Foundation. The Pachamama Oral History Project aims to document the impacts of climate change on the physical and cultural landscapes of the Andes region of South America. In 2024, I interview five agrarian women in the Bolivar province of Ecuador using oral history methodologies, recording their stories during multiple sit down sessions and then spending time with them in their in their day to day lives gathering video and photos to capture the stories, struggles, resilience, and hopes of my narrators. Using multimedia as the main medium allows the stories to be both accessible and digestible.

This project is personal to me: I witnessed my grandmother pull the weight of raising three children while also juggling responsibilities nurturing and protecting her crops in the same way. My grandmother is the strongest person I know, both figuratively and physically. To this day, she lifts a a sack of potatoes bigger than her like nothing, and continues to work the land she loves so much. But she is also concerned. She is concerned about our changing climate and changing world, and so are so many women who are holding the future of food, their families, and their communities on their shoulders. My community is beautiful, and sometimes people in my community like my grandmother, don’t see the beauty in what they do and how important and loved they are. My hope with this project is to let my community, my fellow women and femmes, that they matter, and that I, we, see them.