Women Lead Sustainable Livestock Farming near the Colombian Amazon Rainforest

Jun 28, 2024 | Sean Mattson
View Original

Women in Colombia’s Amazon Rainforest biome highly value trees on their small-scale livestock farms. Better integration of farmers' motivations to conserve the environment could support the achievement of landscape restoration goals in post-conflict areas.

When trees and livestock compete for land, the trees usually lose, but it doesn’t have to be this way. However, centrally designed plans to implement tree-livestock coexistence in deforested areas don’t always work on faraway farmland. 

The ineffectiveness can be due to trying to accomplish too much too quickly. Transforming hundreds of thousands of hectares of treeless or degraded pastures into sustainable landscapes for livestock, nature and people should be a gradual, low-disruption process, and it should start with the people already quietly transforming small pieces of land – and those who want to.