Sustainable Agriculture with CONFRAS

The Confederation of Federations of Salvadoran Agrarian Reform, CONFRAS, is a confederation that represents 131 cooperatives in El Salvador. These cooperatives represent over 5,911 rural farmers throughout El Salvador.

CONFRAS Cooperative

SHARE has worked with CONFRAS since the 1990s to promoting sustainable and organic agricultural techniques, the organization of the agricultural sector, and women’s empowerment. CONFRAS works to strengthen and defend national cooperatives by advocating for policies that promote economic and social development for its members.

Currently, SHARE supports CONFRAS in their efforts to promote organization in the eastern part of the country, motivating cooperatives to participate in national advocacy for sustainable agricultural policies.

SHARE supported the Campesino to Campesino (Farmer to Farmer) program for many years, facilitating a process in which rural farmers teach other rural farmers organic farming techniques.  In 2009 alone, 366 farmers were trained in these techniques.  Grassroots work and popular education empowers rural farmers to teach others, and these new techniques are easier to implement with peer encouragement.

CONFRAS is an organization of agricultural cooperatives that emerged from the Agrarian Reform in the 1980′s.  CONFRAS is structured in the following way:

1) Rural farmers struggling for the right to land form cooperatives (131 in total);
2) Cooperatives come together to find strength in a federation (8 in total);
3) Federations unite in a confederation, CONFRAS