In my MSc thesis, I studied smallholder farming in Western Bahia, a region marked by the expansion of intensive soy production in the Brazilian Northeast. As a part of the area known as MATOPIBA (standing for the parts of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia covered by the cerrado savannah), Western Bahia has been a crucial space for Brazilian agribusiness development since the 1980s, as it offered abundant land with unclear land titling and high agronomic potential.
Het was niet per se mijn bedoeling. Maar, als iemand die queer is en van het platteland komt (een kippenboerderij om precies te zijn) was het misschien altijd zo bedoeld. Wat ik bedoel is de focus van mijn onderzoeksstage, die ik (met veel dankbaarheid) heb kunnen doen bij RSO. Ik had het voorrecht om gesprekken te mogen hebben met queer farmers in Nederland. Hiermee probeerde ik te begrijpen wat ze doen en waarom ze het doen; wat hen helpt te doen wat ze willen doen en wat hen belemmert; de manieren waarop ze zich beperkt voelen door wie ze zijn en waar ze wonen en werken; en hoe hun omgeving en hun praktijken hen in staat stellen zich vrij te voelen en soms juist datgene te vieren wat hen maakt tot wie ze zijn.
Internship opportunity at Boerengroep & AgroEcology Works
Goals • Improving food sovereignty in Gelderland province • Improving the income of CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture) • To give people with a low income ( f.e. people who go to the Food Bank), the opportunity to become a CSA member and harvest their own organic, local food • Expand the movement for Solidarity Payment and increase awareness Description of the internship We are looking for a (preferably Dutch speaking) student who is passionate to be involved in the movement for food sovereignty and solidarity payment. You will contact municipalities in the province Gelderland to indicate whether there is a fund available for people with a low income, and explore the opportunities of linking this fund to a CSA membership. You will co nduct research by finding out CSA’s in the surroundings of interested municipalities, communicate with CSA farmers, CSA members and municipalities.
We are open to your own suggestions about the focus on the internship and there are always side projects possible, such as organising an excursion to a farm that uses solidarity payment, working with Boerengroep on other topics that are running, transcribing interviews on solidarity payment, and we encourage you to work 1 or 2 days a week on a farm and get hands on experience.
Background information As solidarity payment becomes more and more used and explored in the Netherlands, we want to dive into the support of municipalities of this agroecological practice. There are several examples of CSA’s that are part of a municipal program in which people with a low income get financially supported to become part of a CSA. In this way, people with a low income benefit from it, obtaining access to organic, local food. Next to it, the CSA will benefit from it, by obtaining more members and thereby a better income. Moreover, this collaboration helps farmers to ask for a fair income, as the responsibility of food accessibility is taken off their shoulders.
Requirements • Passion for social just food systems • Willing to learn how to interact and communicate with diverse parties: municipalities, farmers, CSA members • Understanding and speaking Dutch language is a pre as you need to reach out to municipalities. In case you’re really enthusiastic and don’t speak Dutch, we are open to discuss options. What we offer • A working space in Wageningen • A lot of freedom within the focus of the internship • Opportunity to meet our wide network in the agroecological movement • Working in a passionate team • 2 contact persons; Elske Hageraats (AgroEcology Works), Marcha van Wijk (Stichting Boerengroep) • An office dog How to Apply If you find yourself enthusiastic about the topic of solidarity payment and want to put your effort in making the world a bit more fair, you can contact us by sending an email to st.boerengroep@wur.nl. Please include reasons what you are enthusiastic about and how you would like to shape the topic into something you are passionate about.
Are you dreaming of an agroecological world in which farming is inclusive and where allies can work together for a fair food system? Mycelia of Hope is looking for an intern who wants to work on the agroecological pillar of social justice and who wants to make Mycelia of Hope – and the broader agroecological movement – inclusive and caring for people who are marginalized, structurally disadvantaged or in precarious situations.
Mycelia of Hope is a working group within the agroecology movement, in which we build bridges between farmers, activists and other allies. During our on-farm working days, activists learn about agroecological practices and can share knowledge on (food) system change. At the same time, farmers can share practical knowledge on agroecology and provide a space to come together, learn and collaborate.
As inclusivity is a struggle in big parts of the European agroecological movement, Mycelia of Hope experiences difficulties in being inclusive and accessible for people in precarious situations. Therefore, we are looking for an intern who wants to help find practical solutions for both Mycelia of Hope and the whole agroecology movement.
Main responsibility The internship is open for your own suggestions and together we will look at what is most in line with your own ideas. There are two main projects we want to work on: social justice within Mycelia of Hope and social justice within the (Dutch) agroecological movement. As an intern, you can pick one of these two to focus on and we can adjust the tasks accordingly.
Social Justice Mycelia ● Setting up a structure to connect migrants and farmers. ● Find potential ways to compensate migrants for farm work in a fair manner for both the farmer and migrant. ● Look into the legal aspects of the work, funding, and processes. ● Get in touch with other similar projects in different countries or on different topics.
Social Justice Agroecological Movement ● Organize a workshop/skillshare on inclusivity in the agroecological movement: invite people who work on this, who struggle with this or who found solutions. ● Perform a small research project on inclusivity/accessibility within the agroecological movement. ● Interviews/questionnaires with farmers who want to think with us about this topic.
Other Possible Responsibilities ● Share group facilitation with the other group members: Facilitate and coordinate the activities and meetings of the working group in a rotation with the other members of Mycelia of Hope ● Help to organize Farming Days ● Create a detailed agenda for our working days ● Website development
Requirements ● Passion for sustainable agriculture, agroecology, and inclusivity/social justice. ● Organizational and communication skills. ● Ability to work collaboratively in a diverse team environment. ● Ability to work independently ● Demonstrated experience in project coordination or related roles is a plus
What we offer ● A working space in Wageningen (or possibly in Amsterdam) ● A lot of freedom within the focus of the internship ● Horizontal teamwork ● Opportunity to meet our wide network in the agroecological movement ● An office dog
How to Apply If you are enthusiastic about participating in transformative projects and believe in the potential of Mycelia of Hope, please submit your resume, and a motivation letter outlining your relevant experience and personal motivation for joining the project, to st.boerengroep@wur.nl. Please include reasons what you are enthusiastic about and how you would like to shape the topic into something you are passionate about.
Application Deadline: 30th of December
Start Internship: February 1st (date is flexible)
The Mycelia of Hope Project is an equal-opportunity employer. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences. Join us in cultivating sustainable change and fostering a sense of belonging within our community!
There’s still time to register for this inspiring course – don’t miss out! Register here.
We have entered a new era in the geopolitics of agriculture and rural livelihoods. The decline of the United States’ power, the rise of China, and an assertive stance of Russia, have resulted in a multipolar global order.
In this course, we will interrogate the ways in which geopolitical rivalries manifest themselves and are responded to, in rural areas around the world. Farm fields, as well as pastures and forests, have always been political domains, and the range of actors affecting rural livelihoods has become more diverse and complex in recent decades. It is imperative to weave geopolitics more strongly into analyses of trajectories of social, agrarian, and environmental change.
Using various analytical lenses, and drawing on a rich variety of scholarly and non-academic works, this workshop will explore the rural everyday of geopolitical rivalries. We will depart from the macro-level to the micro-level and back again, to examine whether, how and to what extent transformations in rural livelihood portfolios and land use practices have reflected geopolitical rivalries in recent decades, for instance in terms of the influx and use of technology, crop and seed varieties; changes in production relations; and, farms’ integration into markets. Examining these dynamics, we will discuss a series of questions, including: to what extent are rural actors’ decisions and practices influenced by “grand politics”? Do geopolitics bear more heavily on rural livelihoods in one locality than in another, and if so, why? How or where does intersectionality come into play? How and to what extent have people resisted or reworked external interventions or influences, and, in aiming to understand responses: does it matter who is intervening? These questions will contribute to a better understanding of the extent to which geopolitics is embedded in rural social and agrarian change, and with what result.
The course engages the dialectic of structure and agency and addresses the importance of multi-scalar and comparative research approaches. We will attend not only to the ways in which rural communities have experienced geopolitics, but also to examine how they have responded to changes instigated by macro-level dynamics.
Rural Sociology Wageningen University 