Regional Association of the Family Farming School in the Sertão (Backlands) – AREFASE, Bahia State

The mission of AREFASE is to promote the liberation of women and men in communities located in the sertão (backlands) of Bahia, through income generation, education, training, awareness-raising, and community integration.

The association maintains the Family Farming School in the Sertão (EFASE) and is coordinated by farmers involved in the struggle for education focused on the reality of the countryside and whose principles are agroecology, integration with the semiarid environment, and guarantee of the essential rights of family farmers in the region, especially in areas using the “fundo de pasto” system (literally “back pasture”, or common grazing management).

Through the school, the association has consolidated its position as a key interlocutor in the claims and demands by traditional back pasture communities, given its energetic action in proposing public policies for these communities.

The activities that have already been developed include: theoretical classes on essential subjects and techniques (agriculture, animal husbandry, and farm management); practical agricultural and cattle-raising activities every day for 90 minutes; social activities like theater, musical presentations, meetings, and scavenger hunts; sports activities (soccer, volleyball, physical education); plus discussions and talks with farmers, fathers and mothers, extension experts, professionals from other areas, cooperatives, trade unions, etc.

The association also conducts programs for structural and quality-of-life improvements in the local population, in partnership with other institutions.

The Project

The proposal by AREFASE is to implement the Human Rights Reference Center for Family Farmers in the Monte Santo Region, Bahia State, to provide free legal aid services, basic documents, allow regularization of land entitlement in back pasture collective areas, and quilombos (communities of descendants of escaped slaves), and conduct legal follow-up to resolve the existing disputes involving land-grabbing and recent farmers’ settlements.

The grant specifically targets the acquisition of equipment to set up the Center’s headquarters, which already has support from the State Human Rights Secretariat for it operations, and training for leaders from the 12 priority areas for action (where the land conflict situation is most serious).

From then on, cases can be referred more quickly to the Offices of the State and Federal Public Defenders, to the Legal Department of the Coordinating Division for Agrarian Development (CDA), the National Institute for Land Settlement and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), the Palmares Foundation, the Offices of the State and Federal Public Prosecutors, and other agencies.