To celebrate International Women’s Day and highlight their importance in the future of the rural environment, Corteva Agriscience and the Confederation of Farmers of Portugal (CAP) announced the three winners of the 2nd Edition of the TalentA Program, in a ceremony that took place on March 08 in the CAP headquarters, in Lisbon.

The TalentA program, launched in 2021 by the Portuguese Farmers Confederation (CAP) and Corteva Agriscience, a reference company in the agricultural sector in seed technology under the Pioneer® trademark, crop protection and digital agriculture, aims to empower rural entrepreneurs and empower their projects with training and funding, contributing to their expansion.

This pioneering initiative in Portugal already has more than 140 entries from rural women in agriculture, from which, in this 2nd edition, three new projects were chosen, resulting in one winner and two finalists.

Mónica Alves, 42 years old, obtained another finalist award for her project “Embedding Science in Agriculture”, which aims to bring Science to Agriculture in the creation of an R&D center in partnership with Universities and knowledge centers, focused on the agricultural problems of the region and experimenting with precision technology, establishing itself as a reference of support for farmers. Already in collaboration with the Faculty of Science of the University of Porto, the company is investing in its laboratory training, for fruit quality analysis, diagnosis of pests and diseases and basic chemical parameters of water and soil. This is a pioneering initiative in the region, in terms of implementing eco-sustainable strategies for managing Drosophila Suzukii plague and improving the production/quality of blueberries and cherries produced in the region.

Mónica Alves has a degree in Biological Engineering from the School of Engineering of the University of Minho. Currently her micro-enterprise has a farm of 4ha of blueberries, 10ha of vines, 1ha of olive groves, apiary and mixed crops. She also aims to expand her activity, both locally and nationally, and create more jobs in a county where women represent 63% of the unemployed registered in the Job Center.

The three winners will have access to a training program (e-commerce, social networks, business plan, commercial techniques, etc.) promoted by CAP to provide the projects with more working tools and success metrics, and the first prize winner will also receive financial support of 5,000 EUR for the implementation of her project.

Get to know the 3 finalist projects and the winner here i https://www.programatalenta.pt/