Since 2025 I have been working with the Rural Sociology department on a project about the labour and the wellbeing of workers in regenerative agriculture. My interest and passion around the topic of labour and rural development grew during my master’s in Cultural Anthropology at Leiden University in 2022. My topic was how Yazidis experience, practice, and construct motherhood and family while being displaced in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and the Netherlands. I spent time with Yazidi families in asylum centres and homes in the Netherlands, as well as time with mothers in refugee camps in KRI. I looked at the division of labour in the household, changes in the perception around the role of mothers in Yazidi families, and how displacement has impacted family life.
In a new article, Dawn Cheong and Bettina Bock argue that farmers’ capabilities, a core component of social sustainability, have been largely neglected in sustainable agriculture discourse. Using a relational approach to capabilities and autonomy, this study explores how women farmers translate the opportunity of agricultural innovation into their valued outcomes, and which factors shape their capabilities, in the context of Terai, Nepal, based on micro-focus group discussions (FGDs) and a survey. Whilst women have experienced a rapid expansion of their capacities and status as producers, their fixed status as providers of social reproduction hinders this expansion from being fully translated into valued outcomes. Gendered and intersectional personal, social and environmental conversion factors independently and co-constitutively shape these capability spaces. In this process, women navigate the demands of sustaining productive roles whilst maintaining the quality of social reproduction, often compromising their bodily, mental and intellectual replenishment and enduring cumulative reproductive health risks across their life courses. This implies that even when provided with the same opportunities, not all women farmers are able to translate them into desired outcomes. The lack of social and institutional interventions to redistribute and reorganise reproductive labour not only functions as a structural barrier preventing women from fully leveraging their productive capabilities but also risks compounding the depletion of women’s labour sustainability, overall well-being, and ultimately, the sustainability of agrarian society.
Howard Koster (regeneratieve boer bij Biesterhof en medewerker bij RSO) spreekt in bij de Provinciale Staten van Gelderland. In zijn bijdrage houdt hij vooral een pleidooi voor een integrale visie op het landbouwbeleid. Daarbij benoemt hij concrete initiatieven die deze samenhangende aanpak in de praktijk brengen.
Artist and co-initiator Jorge Guerrero walks toward us enthusiastically. Eleonora has already conducted research here, in the way she prefers most: working with her hands as much as with her head. While helping out, she listens to stories and plans. Alongside her job, she has been immersed in her PhD research on urban place-making, and she feels slightly self-conscious about suddenly reappearing after a period of absence – together with her partner and supervisor from the Netherlands. That feeling quickly fades in the face of the warm welcome. We, in turn, are struck by how much has visibly been realised in this ecoparque. The park has just celebrated its five-year anniversary.
Pictures taken during our visit to the Ecoparque, December 8th, 2025.
As is typical of urban fringes, this corner of the neighborhood was once filled with trash. Residents recall it as a place that attracted unwanted activities. Apart from a decent football field used by the local club, there was little else – except a clear need for a park. The idea emerged to transform the more than three hectares into a space accessible to everyone: a place to walk, celebrate birthday parties, and do things for which there is no room elsewhere in the neighborhood. Residents plant trees, their species carefully marked on a large, dust-covered map in the small structure at the entrance. There are playgrounds, a recycling point, and a fitness area with serious equipment made from local materials.
All the structures – a workshop, a semi-circular building “like an eye,” as Jorge describes it, overlooking the entire site at the entrance, and a tipi with kitchen facilities – are built from what could be found nearby: glass doors from soft-drink refrigerators, tree trunks, clay, and car tires. Many car tires. In the future, space will be needed for infrastructure, meaning the municipality cannot guarantee permanent usage rights, however, neighbors perceive the potential end of the Ecoparque Primavera as a a scenario that will not happen anytime soon. Funding remains a challenge, yet through countless volunteer hours and the reuse of materials, the project has already come a long way. By the end of 2025, they succeeded in obtaining legal recognition, formally establishing the “Eco Parque Primavera Environmental Committee”. This committee coaches a group of volunteers, recruited via Instagram. They managed to bring together neighbors of all ages, including people from different crafts and professional backgrounds. Many of the trees have been growing here for about a year and a half and appear to be surviving the harsh weather conditions. Large water tanks, filled by the municipality, are used to irrigate the plants. And there are still many ambitions: to host more activities, to create guided tours with stories. Jorge sketches one out for us on the spot.
Places like this inspire admiration, but also raise questions. Will residents be able to sustain the care this park requires over time? This is not a wealthy neighborhood – shouldn’t the state be responsible for providing such amenities here? Is twenty years enough? This initiative emerged from the bottom up: people are quite literally claiming their right to the city. It is a right of use rather than ownership – a commons, or meent in Dutch, where shared use takes precedence. How communal is this space in practice? Formal structures failed here in the past – how far does governmental support extend today? And inevitably: what will this place look like in twenty years, when the trees are larger and use may be more intensive? And in the shorter term, now that the ultra-right-wing Antonio Kast – who emphasizes private property and advocates for a smaller state – was elected president in December 2025, will community initiatives like this one prove to be especially vulnerable?
We’re pleased to welcome Khadija Kaffa to the Rural Sociology Group as a visiting scholar from Kyoto University, Graduate School of Agriculture. Khadija is a PhD candidate whose research adopts a feminist lens to examine how rural women farmers in arid regions of Morocco navigate and assert agency at the intersection of resource access, collective action, and power relations, particularly under pressures of climate stress. During her time at RSO, she is expanding her work to explore how patterns of out-migration reshape household dynamics and contribute to transformations in local food systems in migrants’ home communities.
Research focus
Khadija’s research focuses on the experiences and strategies of rural women farmers in Morocco, highlighting the ways they negotiate resource constraints, power relations, and collective action in the context of climate and socio-economic pressures. A recent extension of her work investigates how migration patterns influence household dynamics and drive changes in local food systems, emphasizing women’s agency in shaping outcomes for both livelihoods and community sustainability.
Her work brings a feminist perspective to debates in rural sociology, agrarian change, and food systems studies, connecting local empirical insights to broader theoretical and comparative discussions.
Current work at RSO
During her visiting stay at the Rural Sociology Group, Khadija is developing the new dimension of her research that examines the intersections of food, gender, and migration. She aims to deepen both the theoretical and empirical grounding of this work, particularly in understanding how these dynamics shape transformations in rural food systems under conditions of out-migration. This visit also provides an opportunity to engage with scholars working on critical agrarian, feminist, and food system studies.
Why RSO and Wageningen?
RSO is an international reference for critical and interdisciplinary research on agrarian change, rural development, and sustainability. Khadija was drawn to Wageningen for its rich space for interdisciplinary dialogue, particularly around questions of gender, mobility, and food system transformation. This visit offers valuable opportunities for exchanging ideas with scholars exploring related issues in diverse geographic and social contexts.
Beyond research
Outside academia, Khadija enjoys food and cooking as a way of connecting with others. She also practices stained glass art, which allows her to express emotions and creatively interpret elements from her fieldwork and research in a visual and artistic form.
Rural Sociology Wageningen University 