We are pleased to host the 25th session of our Political Economy Teach-In Series, “Cultivating Alliances: Women, Urban Gardens & Collective Power” on the 23rd of July at 1pm UTC with Helena Silvestre.
Helena Silvestre is an activist engaged in the defence of threatened territories and communities in favelas (slums) and peripheral urban neighbourhoods. A writer from the favela, she participates in marginalised cultural movements and is a popular educator at the Abya Yala Feminist School. She works on the self-organisation of women from favela communities in the southern periphery of São Paulo, supporting mothers whose children have been murdered by state violence, families of incarcerated people, and victims of gender-based violence. Together with her collective, she is currently dedicated to expanding community gardens that serve as organising hubs to secure access to dignified food, foster community health, and help reclaim power and autonomy over bodies and territories.
During this session, we will reflect on how thinking about the self-organisation of impoverished and racialised women means questioning traditional forms of organisation that centre the patriarchal idea of a single, heroic leader. As we build collective survival strategies, we draw on ancestral resources that reconnect us to alliances beyond the human. We have organised ourselves as a movement structured primarily around community gardens. Through caring for the land, planting and cultivating, and learning ancestral ways of producing food that challenge colonial perspectives, we discuss how to reclaim power that has been taken from us: power over our bodies, over our territories, and over our relationships with the human and non-human life around us.
Reading List
Explore below a curated selection of resources authored by Global South feminists. For a more comprehensive collection on this and other feminist topics, visit the South Feminist Knowledge Hub.
We welcome your contributions! If you know of other resources that should be included in this reading list, please submit them via this form or email us at knowledgehub@southfeministfutures.org.
English
“Notes about hunger” with Helena Silvestre and Carolina Meloni
Authors: Helena Silvestre and Carolina Meloni
A conversation between Helena Silvestre and Carolina Meloni, about her new book.
Food systems transformation through feminist climate justice
Author: Shamali Guttal
This series features short papers by leading researchers on the gender–climate nexus.
Where Indigenous feminisms and food sovereignties meet
Authors: Lisa Iron Cloud, Dr. Priscilla Settee, Simone Senogles
The second episode of a mini-podcast series exploring food sovereignty and indigenous feminisms in the context of North America.
Author: Dzodzi Tsikata
In this session Dzodzi Tsikata unpacked the concept “Agrarian Justice”: what is agrarian justice and how has this concept traveled over time.
Author: Nitya Rao
This paper seeks to critically examine the conceptual linkages between the issue of land rights for women, with household food security on the one hand and gender equality on the other.
Land, gender, and food security
Author: Dzodzi Tsikata
Since 2008, a surge in large-scale land acquisitions, or land grabs, has been taking place in low- and middle-income countries around the globe. This contribution examines the gendered effects of and responses to these deals.
Author: Rama Salla Dieng, Geoffrey Banda, Walter Chambati
This resource analyses the intersections of food security, rural-urban and cross-border dynamics and migration for improved rural livelihoods, within the context of climate change and natural resource management.
Social Reproduction and the Agrarian Question of Women’s Labour in India
Author: Sirisha C. Naidu, Lyn Ossome
The article explores the conditions under which the rural poor reproduce themselves. The authors adopt a more basic definition of daily reproduction of working class households through the acquisition and provision of such basic needs as food, shelter, clothing and healthcare.
Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology
Author: Vandana Shiva
Who Really Feeds the World? is a powerful manifesto calling for agricultural justice and genuine sustainability, drawing upon Shiva’s thirty years of research and accomplishments in the field.
French
30 minutes with Dr Astou Diao Camara: SenEco2050 prospective study: Agro-industry or agroecology?
Author: Rama Salla Dieng
“30 Minutes with…” is a series of interviews with researchers, political leaders, journalists, activists and ordinary citizens conducted by Dr. Rama Salla Dieng, Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh. In this issue, Rama talks with Dr. Astou Diao Camara on her study aimed at elaborating the long-term manifestations of two agricultural models: agroecology, or the agro-industrial model.
Action Research, Agroecology & Food Sovereignty in Senegal with Mariam Sow
Author: Rama Salla Dieng
“30 Minutes with…” is a series of interviews with researchers, political leaders, journalists, activists and ordinary citizens conducted by Dr. Rama Salla Dieng, Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh. In this issue of “30 Minutes with…”, Rama talks with the President of Enda Tiers-Monde, Ms. Mariam Sow on Action Research, Agroecology and Food Sovereignty in Senegal: Some Recommendations to the New Government.
Resisting the threat of global finance, building food sovereignty
Authors: Focus on the Global South & La Via Campesina
The bulletin warns of the critical debt situation in Southern countries, where a major portion of the budget is used to repay debt imposed by the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club. It reaffirms that food sovereignty depends on financial sovereignty and calls for: debt cancellation, strict regulation of financial markets, public funding dedicated to agroecological systems, and international solidarity.
Women’s Voices: Sowing Resistance to Industrial Agriculture
Author: Grain
Rural women, marginalised by industrial agriculture, face land, wage, and decision-making inequities. In response, they’re organising in Mexico, Paraguay, Uganda, India, and elsewhere – leading with agroecology, local seeds, and innovation – to assert food sovereignty and resist patriarchy and corporate agribusiness.
Author: La Via Campesina
Peasant and Indigenous women of La Via Campesina lead seed protection, land defense, and food diversity efforts—driving campaigns, mobilizations, and resistance to corporate control—advancing food sovereignty while challenging patriarchy, violence, and resource commodification.
Beyond the Numbers: Rethinking Food Security Monitoring in Conflict and Crisis
Author: Emily Mattheisen & Ayushi Kalyan
FIAN criticises food security monitoring in conflict zones for prioritising numbers over root causes like rights violations and famine as a weapon. It urges rights-based, locally informed indicators and stronger ties between humanitarian and human rights actors to prevent crises.
Plundering Palestinian Land: Stop Ethnic Cleansing!
Author: Grain
Israel is accelerating West Bank colonisation, displacing Palestinians through settler violence. Companies like Netafim profit from occupied land and exploited labor. GRAIN urges international sanctions and solidarity with Palestinian resistance.
Portuguese
Author: Helena Silvestre
This book by Helena Silvestre is a political autobiography. It is written in the style of a dream diary, turning both autobiography and politics into dreamlike material that is entirely real.
Women building Agroecology – Agriculture Magazine: EXPERIENCES IN AGROECOLOGY
Authors: Laeticia Jalil, Elisabeth Maria Cardoso, Vanessa Schottz Rodrigues (and others)
The articles show how hard women work and how they are involved in practically all agricultural and extractive activities, working very long hours. Even so, they continue to have restricted access to productive resources, and recognition of their work is still called into question.
NOTEBOOK 10 – Healthy Living with Agroecology, food and nutritional sovereignty and security
Author: Marcha das Margaritas
A transnational alliance of women and popular communication
Author: Helena Silvestre
Article on the creation of Amazonas magazine and transnational solidarity among feminists and defenders of the territory.
The system and the anti-system – Three essays, three worlds in the same world
Author: Ailton Krenak, Helena Silvestre, Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Our societies seem to be organised into social, economic, political and cultural systems. What is the system? What is the anti-system?
Spanish
Helena Silvestre: “Knowing about hunger is knowing about desire”
Author: Patricia Chaina
The author of “Notes on Hunger,” the book she presents in Buenos Aires, recreates her passage from the leadership of the Brazilian Roofless Workers Movement to the feminist struggle.
Helena Silvestre presents “Luzia,” her new book
Author: Feria del Libro De Flores
Helena Silvestre talks to journalist and editor Liliana Viola about “Luzia”.
Feminist perspectives on the transformation of economic power: Food sovereignty
Author: Pamela Caro
This article compiles and analyses current debates on food sovereignty from a gender perspective, in which women farmers’ movements in Latin America have played a fundamental role.
Author: Mercedes Monzon Escobedo
The Agroecofeminist proposal, born in the territories of Iximulew-Guatemala, from the perspective of women, indigenous women, mestizo women, and feminists, seeks to emancipate the wounded bodies of Mother Earth and humanity.
Arabic
Authors: Jenny Gustafsson, Angela Saade, Yara Ward
“Women and girls used to do the hard work,” says Hasna. “They were the ones who harvested, while men sowed.” Even the word for a woman who harvests, “harvester,” has acquired its name from the modern harvesting machine.
Author: Jenny Gustafson, Angela Saadeh, Yara Ward
“I learned this from my mother. She taught me things, like how to distinguish between plants,” says Maysoon. “And my father wasn’t very interested in food.” This pattern seems to be common around the world, where women are often the ones who forage for food. Knowledge is passed down through generations, including how to identify and prepare plants and understand the local environmental context. Interestingly, women often have higher levels of food-related knowledge.
Feminist Environmental Justice: The Case of State-Owned Lands in Lebanon
Author: Jana Nakhal
Through the lens of feminist environmental justice, we can see how women are excluded from decision-making about the crops they grow, how the resources that enable them to live on and cultivate their land are taken away, and how they bear the burden of providing food for their families—especially during times of drought and environmental disasters.
Women at the Heart of Agroecology and Food Sovereignty in Palestine
Author: Walaa Al-Qaisiyah
“But it is always worth reflecting on the role of our foremothers in passing down memories, relationships of care, and the wounds and traumas that have shaped us in one way or another. Although my grandmother has passed away, my family in Nablus still holds on to a poppy tree she used to make juice from. I also remember how my maternal grandmother used to make fresh juice from rose plants she grew in the backyard. All these stories and memories live with me—they are part of who I am today.”
The Israeli War on Lebanon: The Land, What Is On It and Within It
Author: Jana Nakhal, Rayan Alaa El-Din
Food sovereignty has always been one of the most provocative forms of independence in the face of occupation—both because it involves solidarity, cooperation, and collective planning among communities, and because it enables Indigenous peoples to withstand occupation, siege, and starvation.
The Hell of War: The Reality of Food Production and Consumption in Palestine
Author: Dina Shaat
In light of immense challenges, food sovereignty stands as the backbone of ensuring food security for the Palestinian community. It must therefore be one of the main priorities of the international community, as it is a fundamental human right. The necessary support must be provided to achieve this goal—ensuring Palestinians have sufficient access to safe and nutritious food—through lifting the blockade and offering financial and technical support to develop the agricultural sector.
Libya: The Collapse of the Agricultural Sector in the Absence of the State
Author: Huda Ahmed Al-Abdali
Recently, the private sector has become dominant, and all government agricultural projects have ceased operations. The highest level of wheat and barley production Libya ever reached was 400,000 tons per year, while the country’s strategic need for wheat alone is approximately 1.5 million tons.
The Food Crisis in Gaza: Between the Hammer of War and the Anvil of Limited Adaptive Capacity
Author: Samar Ahmed Abu Safiyeh
One million displaced women rely primarily on firewood to cook food and provide at least one meal for their children. This has led to the destruction of vegetation and excessive cutting of what remains of plant cover, and this disaster is expected to result in the complete devastation of agricultural lands.
Liked this article? Share it!
