Get to know closely who the Agroligadas are and how the movement’s history of action in Brazilian agribusiness began
Agroligadas emerged from a common goal in agribusiness: the will to combat fake news with quality and truthful information. The movement was founded in August 2018 and the first meeting between women took place the same year.
Although it was not expected, the meeting was held without a visualization of what the Agroligadas have become today. Women who are passionate about agriculture got together to talk about content that could be passed on to lay people, which is still a mission. “The idea was to get together to understand the agribusiness issue itself and to talk about PL-6299, which was about pesticides and was being voted on at the time. There was a lot of fake news in the media and we wanted to understand more about the subject to share it honestly with the lay people who were close to us,” says Geni Caline Schenkel, president of Agroligadas, about the first meeting. This first meeting was attended by about 50 women.
There was a WhatsApp group where these women talked, and from that first meeting, it hasn’t stopped growing, reaching over 150 members in December 2018. At this time, there was a joint will that these women form a group that would represent the agro in the state of Mato Grosso, but this was already impossible, because there were already members from all over the country. “Then, in February 2019, I decided to get some women together and call them to form a leadership group. That’s when we started to ‘organize the house’. The idea of the Agroligadas didn’t even come from the desire to found something, but events were leading us to it,” says Geni.
From then on, the orientation and requests for sponsorship began, so that the idea could be made viable. Geni remembers that in the beginning, the agrolinka made a consultancy with a specialized company, and from there came also the logo that today we know from afar. “Even before finalizing the consultancy, we carried out the first action, which was a field day focused on the cotton crop in Campo Verde”, he tells. In this first action, more than 100 children were received, students from the city’s schools.
And they didn’t stop. The group grew and more and more women from all over Brazil showed up wanting to get to know the movement up close. The Agroligadas products were very successful, and everything with the brand name was coveted by women before they even knew what they were about.
The cores
To organize so many women scattered around the country in one purpose, the nuclei were created, which initially arose as a way to aggregate those who wanted to replicate the action of the Agroligadas outside Campo Verde. With this, the movement began to appear with great expressiveness in the media: articles in newspapers and magazines, radio programs, interviews, among others.
Currently, the Agroligadas have several nuclei spread even outside the state of Mato Grosso, and they were organized so that women could organize actions with the same initial purpose as the precursors: to carry on education and communication with a commitment to truth in mind.
The walk in agribusiness
For Geni, the representation of the Agroligadas has been a very beautiful and organic movement, where women have put on the shirt, putting their hands to work and carrying out very important projects for the future of agribusiness. “We who are part of it feel a great pride because we can see that all the women have understood the purpose of Agroligadas and are taking the name of the movement far beyond what we imagined possible. Soon we will complete 5 years of a beautiful journey of hard work and growth, but always in an organic and conscious way”, she says.
And they think about going far, but without a specific defined place.
‘“We talk a lot about reaching out to the whole world, because what we want most is to take correct and honest information about agribusiness as far away as possible. We want to break the separation between the countryside and the city, connect everything and make people understand that we are interdependent. Both are important. We think about reaching the international level, but this is not a direct goal. I believe that this moment will come with our work. We want to go far, but to continue taking information and teaching children who are growing up already with a good vision about agro” (Geni)
The possibility of bringing together so many women with a true and aligned purpose, and still being able to involve children and young people, is a source of pride for all who participate in the Agroligadas. This perspective of acting together is also important for women who sometimes didn’t even have the will to develop leadership because they didn’t know they were capable of it, but who, by acting, observed that they could go much further. “We have women who didn’t even think about being in charge of any business, even if they are part of a family with their own business, and today I see that the Agrolinka movement has transformed the way many of them look at things. I feel this transformation when I talk to some of the women who are involved in our group,” says Geni.
For the president, Geni, Agroligadas are like another child: “I want people to be part of the movement, that they understand our purpose, that they wear the shirt, that the projects are better and better, and that our idea is taken even further. We dedicate time to Agrolinkas and I want us to be able to advance more and more, to improve, and to be really connected in the future. We can go much further and I want our purpose to be known worldwide for having left a legacy of women in agribusiness and for having built a bridge between the country and the city”, Geni concludes.
Agroligadas can be found on social networks such as Instagram e Facebook and all projects and news are here on the site. Stay up to date with our actions and discover with us all the ways in which agribusiness can take us.
