Feminist Agroecology and Criollo Hens: Women's Everyday Resistance in Colombia

ABSTRACT

Industrial poultry technologies and processes are reshaping the knowledge, practice and agrobiodiversity of criollo ( Gallus domesticus ) or backyard hen keeping, as well as outcompeting this livelihood in formal markets. This transition undermines women's autonomy and socio‐economic resilience by engendering dependence on market inputs, including imported poultry, pharmaceutical inputs and feed. Despite the accelerated expansion of the industrial poultry sector in Colombia, criollo hen keeping persists for subsistence and informal markets. This paper asks why and how criollo hen keeping persists and how women differentially resist the industrial poultry sector and intersecting gendered power dynamics through everyday practices of care. The paper draws on a subset of nine semistructured interviews from two projects working across several regions in Colombia, which both employed participative research action and co‐produced methods. It argues that women use intergenerational networks of labour/knowledge sharing, communitarian practices and agroecological principles to build autonomy from industrial processes, ensuring socio‐economic empowerment in families and wider communities. This less visible and informal opposition to industrial poultry systems feeds into organised resistance from women farmers specifically.