The female side of agriculture

What is at sake is nothing less than our future! Because it all depends on the agriculture of today. We must evolve to an agriculture without chemicals, without long travels and without machines and soil destruction. Today's agriculture is strongly male-dominated. Most of the well-known pioneers and book authors regarding agriculture are men. But the agriculture of the future needs female virtues as much as male ones! Many women* worldwide are already farming in harmony with nature, building up the soil, caring for the earth - and they are overlooked. We want to make these women* visible, to show what they achieve, how they work, how they think. In doing so, we want to inspire people worldwide to become farmers or gardeners themselves, to feed the world with us and to heal the planet at the same time! In order to share the knowledge we gather, to support the people we visit and their projects, and to tell you all about the amazing encounters we make, we would like to publish a book.

Our book will be realized in collaboration with Löwenzahn Verlag. Our first book "Urban Farming. Growing Vegetables, Community Gardening, Creating Food Sovereignty," which tells our own story as urban women farmers, was published in June 2021. Löwenzahn Verlag supports books that advocate for a sustainable future and show alternatives to our current living models. We are overjoyed to be able to launch this project together! The publishing house will finance the book project, cover parts of the travel costs for us as well along with a photographer, and support the projects in the global South. However, we still need your help for our research trips.

The goal is nothing less than saving the world! No, seriously: with our book we want to report the effects of industrial agriculture and show alternatives in order to make a contribution against our climate disaster. At the same time, we aspire to equality between men, women* and all people worldwide and we aim to create a network of farmers/gardeners in which they can exchange ideas.

Since it is in the interest of all of us to create sustainable agriculture in harmony with nature, we want to address people of all ages and from all social backgrounds! Ideally we also want to motivate people to discover their own green thumb and help shape the agriculture of the future.

Because you'll make an important contribution to protect the environnment and support the equality between men and women*, especially in countries of the global south. A book publication and media coverage of these topics can steer agriculture in a new direction! We would like to acknowledge and give a shout out to the many small micro farms that produce climate neutral organic food, protect biodiversity, build up soil and lead away from the agricultural steppe to a diverse, small structured landscape. No Food Deserts!

The money raised goes towards our research trips. Together with our photographer Priscillia Grubo, we can visit Malvikaa on her permaculture farm in India, where she employs women in difficult living conditions; Noémie and Cassa in Senegal, who run a "women's garden" in which 100 women live; Arlene on her large rooftop farm in Toronto, where she supplies subscribers and markets; as well as many different women in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. Priscillia will bring her artistic eye and capture our encounters, while we have conversations, accompany the women* at work and explore their ways of thinking and working. We will then write the book back in Frankfurt and the release is scheduled for mid-2023. Löwenzahn Verlag will be by our side for the writing process, support us during the travels and take care of everything beyond text and photographs.

10,000 € from the proceeds of the book will be donated by the publishing house to the two projects in India and Senegal. Each of the projects will be supported with 5,000 €.

If we are overfunded, we can realize one more stop: the trip to the indigenous Kogi people in Colombia.

Costs:

• Senegal: 6.000,-
• India: 5.000,-
• Canada: 8.000,-
• Germany, Swiss, Austria, France: 4.000,-

Fee Bernd Güßbacher (Crowdfunding-Movie): 2.000,-

Optional:

• Trip to the Kogi: 2.500,- per person

In case of significant overfunding, other „GemüseheldInnen“ who are men and women from our community gardens in Frankfurt can come with us on the trips (especially to the Kogi). In doing so, we create a worldwide network between the global South and North.