The use of social technology transforms reality in the semi-arid region of Pernambuco with reduced consumption of firewood, smoke expelled outside the home and autonomy for women to work
In Sertão do Pajeú (PE), agroecological stoves are changing the daily lives of rural communities. They replace traditional wood stoves, eliminating smoke inside homes and using less firewood – only dry twigs and plant remains, without having to cut down trees. In addition to saving on cooking gas, it protects women's health by preventing the inhalation of smoke that makes the lungs of those who cook every day sick.
The president of the Fortuna Rural Community Association, Maria Joselma de Vasconcelos, has been using the technology since 2014. According to her, the agroecological stove means autonomy. “I only worked at home taking care of the children and the farm. With the agroecological stove, I had more free time and started producing and selling pamonha and canjica. It was a dream come true. Since then, I have been able to earn my own income.”
Next to the stove, there is an energy-efficient oven, making it possible to use secondary firewood, such as prunings, twigs and corn cobs, found around productive backyards. “It saves time when leaving the house. We don't need to deforest, just pick up twigs from the yard”, explains Vasconcelos, who also coordinates a community project supported by the Ecos Fund.
A survey by Casa Mulher do Nordeste, presented in 2018 in the Journal of Agroecology Notebooks, showed that the use of agroecological stoves among 30 women farmers in the Pajeú territory generated a 64% reduction in the time spent acquiring firewood.
The research also identified that, with the implementation of the technology, there was a 45% drop in the use of firewood and 71% in the use of coal.
“This technology improves women’s quality of life, helps improve agroecological production, commercialization and protects the environment”, explains the project supervisor at Casa Mulher do Nordeste, Sara Rufino, one of the authors of the study.
The House offers workshops to teach families how to build their own stoves, which, according to Sara, are easy to replicate. To light the stove, the recommendation is to use organic matter that can be absorbed by the soil, such as fence remains and twigs. It is not necessary to deforest the Caatinga and remove the live branches, nor to use charcoal, a product of deforestation..
"Women use much less firewood. Greenhouse gas emissions are much lower because the cooking time of the food is optimized, and the time the stove remains on releasing smoke is shorter.. "
The stove works with a combustion chamber that heats a metal plate where the pots are placed and has an integrated oven. All the heat is used and the smoke comes out through an external chimney. Learn more about how this social technology works in the Women in the Caatinga Handbook, from Northeast Women's House.
Less deforestation
Family farmers from São José do Egito, who received the agroecological stove through the project “Farming families agroecologically sowing the Pajeú landscape”, from the Rural Community Association of Fortuna, supported by the Ecos Fund, agree with this definition.
“A gas cylinder lasts for a maximum of 30 days. Now, with the agroecological stove, I can use gas for three months,” says cheese and cake producer Joselma Ferreira, who combines the use of the agroecological stove with a gas stove depending on her financial availability.
A lover of the Caatinga, she says she has no desire to live “on the street”, referring to the urban part of the municipality, because she really likes living in the countryside. “On the farm I raise my chicken, my guava, mango, acerola and cashew trees, my coriander and chives. If I need these on the street, I'll have to buy them. Here I use my own production.”
Regarding the agroecological stove, Joselma Ferreira makes a request. “I ask people not to deforest. Don’t do that, to use the stove you don’t need to deforest. We only remove dead wood, fallen on the ground, we don’t remove the wood that is alive.”
according to research published in 2013 in Fapesp Magazine, Illegal deforestation in the Caatinga is mainly linked to the energy issue, through the extraction of firewood and charcoal from the native forest, which goes to steel mills in the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, or plaster and ceramic industries in the semi-arid region itself.
Wendya Nascimento, 22, was selected as part of the Fortuna association's project to receive the technology. She has always lived in a rural community in the semi-arid region of Pernambuco. The stove, which has just been built in her home, takes one day to complete and nine days for the cement to “cure” before it can finally be lit.
“I make cakes to sell. And the agroecological stove will change my life. Because energy is very expensive. I make cakes using electricity and sometimes using gas, when there is a lot of demand. Now with the agroecological stove, that will change. I am very excited,” she says.
Public politics
A Caatinga is a totally Brazilian biome and covers the states of Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia and Minas Gerais. 38% of the population, consisting of approximately 27 million inhabitants, lives in rural areas. The Caatinga is one of the most biodiverse dry forests in the world, although it has already lost about half of its vegetation cover (Mapbiomas).
Indigenous peoples, quilombolas, artisanal fishermen, family farmers, and rural people help to preserve the biome through their ways of life, facing the challenges of the biome's historical occupation.
Data from the Articulation of the Semi-Arid (ASA) show that, in regions with a semi-arid climate, 1,3% of large estates (over a thousand hectares) account for 38% of the region's arable land, while 1,5 million peasant families share just 4,2% of these areas.
Social technologies for coexisting with the Semiarid region, such as agroecological stoves, are means fundamental to guarantee and improve access to resources and to reduce social and gender inequalities.
At the public policy level, the impact is even greater, with the potential to transform landscapes. An example of this is the One Million Cisterns Program (P1MC), implemented in 2003, on the initiative of the Articulação do Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA) with funding from the Federal Government.
Since then, more than a million cisterns have been built. With water guaranteed for consumption and production, the challenge in the Semiarid region — which occupies 12% of the national territory — is no longer so much drought, but rather historical inequality in the countryside.
And in this sense, Agroecological stoves have already proven their power to transform realities in the backlands and in the landscape.
Luciene Josefa, a resident of Sítio Mandim, shares the sentiment of the other family farmers: “I like life in the Caatinga: working with plants, vegetables, raising animals, sheep, milk, cattle… We live off corn, bananas, chickens, eggs — and projects like this stove.”
#AquiTemFundoEcos: The project “Families farming agroecologically sowing in the Pajeú Landscape”, by the Rural Community Association of Fortuna, made it possible to install 10 agroecological stoves in the community of Fortuna and surrounding areas. The initiative was selected in a call for proposals by the ECOS Fund, within the scope of the Small Grants Programme (SGP) — a programme financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented internationally by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and executed in Brazil by the ISPN.
Text by ISPN Communications Advisory / Camila Araujo.