Jones Severino Pereira Agroforestry School starts this Tuesday (15)

Darliton Silva
Popular communicator of the Sabiá Center

This Tuesday (15), the Sabiá Center will start the Jones Severino Pereira Agroforestry School . It will be a training course in Agroforestry Systems (SAF) with a workload of 64 in-person hours and duration of 01 year.

There will be 6 editions of the school that will form a total of 90 farmers (15 participants per class) who are distributed in the 3 territories where Centro Sabiá operates (Agreste, Sertão and Zona da Mata Sul de Pernambuco).

The training will be provided by the project’s technical team, which will involve farmers from territories that have extensive experience with SAFs. An important didactic element of the course will be the valorization of the pedagogical dialogue between theory and practice and the exchange of experiences between farmers.

Training in the implementation and management of agroforestry will take place through experimentation and practical experience of the participants , being carried out in the agroecosystems of the families benefited by the project.

During training, it is expected that farmers learn to plan, implement and manage SAFs to face the climate emergency from the knowledge of various techniques, strategies, procedures and experiences according to the reality and specificity of each of the biomes where the project will take place (Caatinga and Atlantic Forest) .

In addition to the focus on theoretical and practical training in SAFs, broader topics that dialogue with Agroecology and dealing with the effects of climate change will be addressed, which will be addressed in a transversal way, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals . In this sense, number 13 stands out, which deals with global action against climate change, in addition to others such as 02 – Zero Hunger and Sustainable Agriculture; number 05 with respect to gender equality and number 12 – Sustainable consumption and production.

It is important to emphasize the relationship between the Sabiá Center and the Agroecology and Peasantry Nucleus (NAC) of Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (UFRPE ) , which together have promoted some courses and events focused on Agroecology, in addition to conducting research and student internships in the areas of families assisted by Sabiá. From this perspective, there will be a dialogue with the group of professors/researchers, so that they can somehow contribute to the training process proposed by the School of Agroforestry, enabling the issuance of course certificates as a university extension course.

WHO WAS JONES SEVERINO PEREIRA?

Jones was a pioneer in Agroforestry agriculture in Pernambuco. The son of peasants, he lived all his life in Abreu e Lima, in Sítio São João, in the Metropolitan Region of Recife, which served as a school for those interested in knowing and learning about agroforestry. Studies carried out by Centro Sabiá attested that it managed more than 70 different species in its agroforest of just one hectare of land, where it produced about 13 tons of food per year. He was the founder of Centro Sabiá and the first agroecological fair in the state of Pernambuco, Espaço Agroecológico das Graças, in 1997, which today is an inspiring reference for so many other fairs in Pernambuco. He has taught courses and lectures at congresses and seminars at several universities in Brazil. On merit, in 2004, he was awarded the Pernambuco Environment Personality award. This course is named after all that Jones, his wife Lenir and their children represent for the work of Centro Sabiá.