CCRP leadership learns from agroecology leaders in Brazil

Every year, the CCRP’s leadership team comes together somewhere around the world to evaluate our work, plan, and most importantly learn from each other and the places we share together. This year’s annual leadership team meeting took place in Florianopolis, Brazil. A beautiful island, located in southern Brazil, that not only shared its beauty with us, but also its vast knowledge about creating more agroecological systems.

Throughout the week-long meeting, we learned from and enjoyed food provided by Bijajica EcoGastronomia. Bijajica is a catering company specialized in organic, agroecological, and local food. The ingredients used are seasonal and come directly from the producer. Fabiano Gregório, head chef and owner, is an activist of the Slow Food movement in Brazil since 2009. The food makes a clear connection between Brazilian culture, diets, and the agroecological producers in the local market. You can learn more about Bijajica EcoGastronomia by following them on Facebook and Instagram.

Learning on the ground and from those closest to the issues has been a long-standing core principle for CCRP. Our recent visit to Cepagro and Bucket Revolution and Santa Rosa de Lima brought us close to those working to advance the agroecology movement in Brazil. Cepagro, a NGO based out of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, serves as a central hub to connect researchers and practitioners advancing agroecological ideas and practice. You can read more about our visit to Cepagro here. After visiting Cepagro’s headquarters, we learned from Bucket Revolution. Bucket Revolution is one of the projects started at Cepagro that has gained international notoriety by winning, among other accolades, the 2019 World Future Council’s Outstanding Practice in Agroecology. Bucket Revolution is a project started in 2008 that blends waste management, circular economies, agroecology, and urban agriculture.

We closed our week by visiting the city of Santa Rosa de Lima. A city that prides itself in being Brazil’s agroecology capital. By combining ecotourism, agrotourism, a booming agroecological production of dairy, and forward thinking policymakers, Santa Rosa de Lima has positioned itself as an example of the potential of agroecology transformation as means to develop economies and remain productive while being in harmony with the environment.