Towards a Paradigm Shift: How Women Create Agroecology in Central and Eastern Europe

The year 2024 marks twenty years since Poland and other Central European countries joined the European Union. This has been a period of dynamic development thanks to newly obtained EU funding, including for agriculture. Polish agriculture has become much more professional, but at the same time numerous problems have emerged, just as in the so-called old EU countries.

These include a decline in the number of small farms and an increase in the number of monocultures, resulting in the deterioration of soils and water, an aging farming population and a lack of generational replacement. An expanding group of people around the world is looking for alternatives that will allow them to respond to these negative phenomena, and women dominate this group.

One form of opposition to the dominant and often criticized model of the food system is the idea of agroecology, implemented through grassroots movements and ventures. In Poland, the most important venue for such activities is the Ecological Folk University1, established in the early 21st century and led by Ewa Smuk-Stretenwerth and Peter Stratenwerth together with their team. The Polish School of Agroecology has been based at this special place for several years, spreading values close to agroecology among people unfamiliar with the concept. In 2024, for the first time, on the initiative of the Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development and the Agro-Perma-Lab Foundation, an agroecological meeting of female farmers and producers from Central and Eastern Europe was also held here.

The convention aimed to connect women involved in agroecological activities in Central and Eastern Europe and to enhance their advocacy skills. The goal was to empower those who use the ideas of agroecology in their daily work to build coalitions and drive a paradigm shift in the way the entire food system is conceptualized.

During this 4-day meeting, participants from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, representing institutions such as Gradina Moldovei, Elkana, AMPI, the Rural Parliament of Slovakia and Permakultura in Ukraine, worked on advocacy and women's cooperation in agriculture, formulating policy demands and discussing how to make their voices heard at the highest levels of European politics, i.e. where decisions about rural life are made.

The most important but also the most intangible result of this meeting was the exchange of experiences and daily practices that are common to all agroecological female farmers, regardless of whether they live in the Slovakian Tatra Mountains or among the vineyards of Moldova.

One of those women is Dorota Dembińska, an agricultural producer and village leader who, after graduating from high school, left her native village for a big city to pursue higher education, a good job in her own company. Today she grows herbs and flowers on 16 hectares, and raises cold-blooded horses and poultry. However, if someone had told her 20 years ago that today she would proudly call herself a farmer, she would not have believed them.

I never thought of becoming a farmer. I dreamed of studying psychology and escaping to the city. But when my parents suffered a serious accident a few years ago, I decided to take the reins.

Dorota changed not only her life but also the way her family farm was run. She switched from conventional farming to organic methods and stopped using chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides.

She attaches great importance to soil regeneration and takes care of the closed loop on the farm, using materials available locally, such as wood chips, waste paper and her own compost. For Dorota, agroecology is all about combining the resources that the countryside has to offer.

Agroecology is my fields, my meadows, where I do not use any chemicals. If it is necessary to control the weeds growing on them, I use only natural methods for this, based on what I have on the farm – Dorota concludes.

The methods Dorota describes for tillage, weed or pest control fall under one of the three dimensions of agroecology: the organic dimension2. However, sustainable environmental practices must be rooted in the rural way of life. After all, maintaining resilient ecosystems guarantees not only stable agricultural production that ensures farms are economic viable but also the continuity of a culture which is the foundation of rural identity.

For Dorota, this aspect is crucial:

My idée fixe is “from seed to loaf.” I would like most women in the countryside to grow crops, know how to use grains, and bake their own bread. I know that nowadays raising animals, especially cows, is a rarity, but in my village there are still farmers who do it. You can make your own cheese from the milk you buy from them. It is worth using the power of herbs such as lavender, thyme, mint. Together with the girls I work with, I also create natural herbal cosmetics. It's all about using what's nearby—being able to recognize and knowing how to process pine shoots or elderberry. And not letting that knowledge slip away.

The existence of strong rural communities united by shared values and lifestyles is one of the pillars of agroecology, emphasized by both grassroots movements and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. For our deliberations, the relevant question is: How can we build a rural and agricultural community under conditions of increasing de-agrarianization and a rural exodus to the cities? How can we establish an identity that is authentic and can become a model for younger villagers, ensuring the continuity of generations and traditions? And finally, how does one navigate this role, whether as someone new to the village (a new entrant), or, like Dorota, as someone returning to their community after many years?

The key in my case was old acquaintances, from my school years. And the desire to act, which was awakened in me by the city. After moving to the countryside, I saw that many women were locking themselves in their homes. I decided to change this and, with the help of old friends, pull these girls out of their homes and get them involved in joint activities—but ones that would be useful in everyday life, so that none of them would feel they were wasting their time. We rented a room in the village community center, and we began to meet and make preserves and cosmetics together, as well as learn new skills. This led to ideas like cheese-making workshops and even home slaughtering of animals conducted by people from our village hall.

Informal cooperation, self-organization, and learning from each other are important aspects of the social dimension of agroecology. The horizontal exchange of knowledge and, above all, the recognition of traditional agrarian skills as equally valuable as new technologies form the basis for preserving the agricultural culture created by our ancestors. De-agrarianization, as Dorota also points out, remains a problem in this regard:

There are fewer and fewer female farmers. In my village, there are literally six farms left, two of which are engaged in dairy farming. In contrast, in other places I visit, I notice a trend—among women over 45, women co-owners of farms dominate and play supporting roles, while most of the duties associated with agricultural work are performed by their husbands. In contrast, younger girls, between 20 and 40, educated and familiar with the city, who have studied agriculture or otherwise expanded their knowledge of the subject, are really beginning to take responsibility for their farms. They're thinking about how to expand them, they're doing agritourism, they're switching to ecology, they're setting up care farms, and they're getting involved in village life. Ecological awareness and the desire to build a community are noticeably stronger in them than in men.

Dorota's observations are consistent with data from public statistics, from which a certain profile of farms managed by women emerges. As a rule, this type of farm is more often self-supply, multifunctional, residential, and treated as a way to supplement the family budget, but also relatively more inclined to “innovate”, e.g., by undertaking home processing, direct sales, organic production, handicrafts, agro-tourism, etc.

It is worth adding, however, that Polish public data does not reflect the full picture of agriculture in general or the issue of women's presence within it. The number of real functioning farms is overstated. Presumably, this is also the situation in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

The situation of Polish women farmers has been shaped in specific circumstances. Our country went through the socialist period without the large-scale nationalization of agricultural land (which took place in other Eastern Bloc countries). It was subject to the narrative of women's equality in the professional sphere common to all socialist countries, but this did not reduce the cultural pressure for women to undertake domestic and care work [Fidelis 2020]. Additionally, the attitudes and behaviors of female farmers in Poland are influenced by messages about women's roles from conservative circles, the perception of which is stronger in rural areas.

Until recently, the family was the main field of aspiration for most women, and their identity was shaped by the roles of wife and mother. Public activity, even within agricultural circles or other professional organizations, was beyond their reach. Attempts to break out of these clearly prescribed roles by rural women were generally met with disapproval from the community [Michalska 2013].

However, nowadays, especially among younger generations of women, the desire to engage in self-development, get an education and realize their own career aspirations without having to leave their hometowns is growing stronger, as Dorota's statement illustrates.

Gender equality and an appreciation of the role of women is an important aspect of agroecology. In Poland, it is not uncommon for the work of women to be belittled. They are mainly involved in administrative and accounting matters on the farm, activities that are considered secondary to its functioning. There is an emphasis on the greater role of the man in taking on those activities that require greater physical strength and knowledge about how to operate and repair heavy equipment. And yet, in today's agricultural environment, management, organization, planning and raising funds for the business are crucial. Dorota says:

I think it is as easy for women to become farmers as it is for men. In addition to physical vigor, we have all the predispositions to do so. Women can cultivate and even operate machinery just like men. What's more—from my observation—women are the ones who do the paperwork, they are the ones who remember what the farm number is, what forms need to be filled out and by when, and they are the ones who get things done at the offices. And these days that's a very important part of running a farm. And yet there are still stereotypes here—women are smaller, have fewer opportunities. That's why I'm so keen to break this, to get out of this vicious circle, to start meeting, talking. Because men have plenty of opportunities to meet—they feast together, they talk. And they get along!  This can be seen especially in the chambers of agriculture—99% of the members of these organizations are men, arguing their position on the grounds that they are the ones who have worked on the farm since childhood, they are the ones who have this knowledge, experience, the golden mean for everything. The male voice still counts double.

The agroecological approach remains a niche concept in Central and Eastern Europe and is still not widely recognized. Nevertheless, many of the features that characterize agroecology, e.g., self-organization and closed-loop systems on farms, were typical of peasant practices for hundreds of years (though they have been increasingly distorted over the past several decades). Today, it is more often women than men who are willing to look for answers to environmental-social challenges in precisely those practices that worked well in the past.