Women, medicinal herbs and healthy food: an experience in the Médio Alto Uruguai of Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study carried out with an organized group of rural women, this paper
brings their experience around the health debate and the use of medicinal herbs, seeking
to evidence practices and discourses of them when they establishes action related to healthy
food and agroecology. The intertwining of practices involving the association between knowledge,
medicinal plants, social organization and political action are leading the emergence, at
Médio Alto Uruguai of Rio Grande do Sul (Brasil), of transformations towards the inclusion of
women in projects related to public policies of rural extension and territorial development. The
training activities in which women were involved seem to contribute to the process of debate
and advancement of ecological food production in the territory in question.