8 Features

features

by Marilee Karl

Inseparable: The Crucial Role ofWomen in Food Security Revisited

is on the rise. A foodcrisis is hurting the poor all over theworld, hitting the landless and womenthe hardest. It struck even before thecurrent global economic meltdown andrising food prices aggravated people’saccess to food. Those who were alreadyfood insecure find themselves inworsening conditions. They are joined bymillions more of newly food-insecurepeople.

Misguided agricultural and trade policieshave contributed to the current foodcrisis, including the failure to recognise

Whatever happened to the pledges of world leaders to reduce the

number of hungry in the world?

women’s crucial roles in agriculturalproduction and household food security.

Now that we are at the crux ofcompounding crises, what lessons can wedraw? More importantly, how can weavoid the same mistakes in the future?

As the 2008 State of Food Insecurityreported, “The vast majority of urban andrural households in the developing worldrely on food purchases for most of theirfood and stand to lose from high foodprices. High food prices reduce real incomeand worsen the prevalence of foodinsecurity and malnutrition among the

Towards Being

Hunger-Free Women.

Women farmers went

out on the streets to out

demand their access to

land in Johi, Pakistan.

For rural communities,

land remains the main

source of survival and

for women,

empowerment.

Photo taken from Action Aidand slightly modified, http://www.actionaid.org.uk/pix/cms_upload/hunger.jpg

Hunger

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No.1, 2009 WOMEN IN ACTION

Food security? Right to food? Food sovereignty?

The WFS declared that: “Food securityexists when all people, at all times, havephysical and economic access to sufficient,safe and nutritious food to meet theirdietary needs and preferences for an activeand healthy life.”

Since the WFS, there has been agroundswell of support especially fromnon-governmental organisations (NGOs)and other civil society organisations(CSOs), to recognise the right to food as ahuman right. NGOs and CSOs, includingpeople’s and peasant’s organisations haverallied around the concept of foodsovereignty as essential for food security.

Back in 2001, when governments gatheredto assess their progress vis-a-vis their WFScommitments, NGOs and CSOsdeclared: “Food Sovereignty is the RIGHTof peoples, communities, and countries todefine their own agricultural, labour,fishing, food and land policies which areecologically, socially, economically andculturally appropriate to their uniquecircumstances. It includes the true rightto food and to produce food, which meansthat all people have the right to safe,nutritious and culturally appropriate foodand to food-producing resources and theability to sustain themselves and theirsocieties” (International PlanningCommittee for Food Sovereignty, 2001).

Availability vs. accessibility

Development agencies often focus on theavailability of food through increased foodproduction. Immediately after the WFS,there was an emphasis on improving yieldsand high-potential productive areas toachieve and maintain sufficient foodproduction to feed the growing worldpopulation. Research, technology and a“new green revolution” were seen as themain ways toward food security. This wasa continuation of the focus bydevelopment agencies on commercialagriculture and cash crops for exports.

poor by reducing the quantity and qualityof food consumed.”

Promises, promises, promises

In the hopeful days of 1996, heads ofgovernments gathered at the World FoodSummit (WFS) in Rome, Italy anddeclared: “We pledge our political will andour common and national commitmentto achieving food security for all and to anongoing effort to eradicate hunger in allcountries, with an immediate view toreducing the number of undernourishedpeople to half their present level no laterthan 2015.” In terms of numbers, thismeant reducing the undernourished peoplein the world from 800 million to 400million by 2015.

The Milennium Development Goals(MDGs) also pledged to reduce hunger by2015, but the goal was more modest. MDG1 is committed to halve the proportion ofhungry people rather than the absolutenumber.

More than halfway towards 2015, theworld is nowhere near to approaching thetargets of the WFS and MDGs. On thecontrary, hunger is increasing around theworld. By mid-2008, the number ofmalnourished people in the world hadrisen to 923 million, according to the mostrecent estimates of the Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO). Thesharpest rise came in 2007 with an increaseof 75 million hungry since the period of2003 to 2005.

Asia-Pacific and sub-Saharan Africaaccounted for 750 million of the hungrypeople in the world from 2003 to 2005. Asa result of the global food crisis, anadditional 41 million people in Asia-Pacificand another 24 million in sub-SaharanAfrica have plummeted into hunger (FAO,2008). But no continent or country has beenspared. In the United States (US), forinstance, more than 38 million people werestruggling to put food on the table as of2006 (Learner, 2006).

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Hunger, however, is very much a problemof unequal access to food, both within andamong countries. The availability of anadequate supply of food to feed the world’spopulation at the international level doesnot mean food security at the national levelif a country cannot grow, purchase orotherwise obtain food to feed its people.Likewise the availability of food at thenational level does not guarantee foodsecurity for all people in the country.

like the US where over 30 million people,or more than the entire population of somecountries, lack enough and sufficientlynutritious food.

In less rich countries, there are also hugegaps between the rich, who can afford toeat sumptuously, and the poor who starve.

Small farmers and peasants squeezed out andhungry

Advocates of the right to food and foodsovereignty attribute rising hunger to thepromotion of big agro-industrialcorporations and the international trade infood and its detrimental effects on localand national food production, especiallysmall farmers. According to the NGODeclaration at a recent high-level meetingon food security in Madrid, Spain, “As thevicious food price crisis deepens,...millionsof peasants will be pushed out of foodproduction, adding to the hungry in therural areas and the slums of the big cities.”

In a statement made by peasants, farmers,NGOs and CSOs at the Madrid meetingin 2009, they asserted: “Peasant-basedagriculture and livestock-raising andartisanal fisheries can easily provide enoughfood once these small-scale food producerscan get access to land and aquatic resourcesand can produce for stable local anddomestic markets. This model produces farmore food per hectare than the corporatemodel, enables people to produce their ownfood and guarantees stable supply.”

Even within households, there aredisparities in food security: women andgirls get less food than males, both inabsolute and nutritional values. TheWorld Food Programme (WFP) revealed:“Gender inequality is a major cause andeffect of hunger and poverty: It isestimated that 60 per cent of chronicallyhungry people are women and girls [and]20 per cent are children under five.”

Hunger in the midst of abundance

In countries with a super-abundance ofavailable food, people are still going hungrybecause they do not have access to thatfood. This is true even in rich countries

More than Availability.

However available and

nutritious vegetables are in the

market, some people still

cannot afford them because of

their prices. In photo is the

Banfora Market in Burkina

Faso.

Photo courtesy of Marco Schmidt fromWikimedia Commons.

As a result of the global food crisis, an

additional 41 million people in Asia-Pacific

and another 24 million in sub-Saharan

Africa have plummeted into hunger.

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More food choices or less?

At first glance, it may seem that today’smarkets offer more food choices.Supermarkets in rich countries and evenin poor ones are stuffed full of foodproducts flown or shipped in from all overthe world, leaving great carbon footprintsin their wake. You can buy mangoes inNorway and apples in the Philippines.You can find Coca-Cola just abouteverywhere in developing countries. Onthe other hand, you may not be able tofind locally grown fruits because all thebest ones have been exported to richercountries. Some nutritious local foods aredisappearing as they are replaced bycommercial crops and imported foods.

Similarly, fast food restaurant chains areubiquitous not only in rich countries butincreasingly in poorer ones, often puttinglocal food vendors out of business.

The freedom of choice is on the declinedue to the increasing agribusiness controlof what is and what is not grown, export-oriented agricultural policies, the declinein biodiversity, and the dominance oftransnational mass media which promotecertain lifestyles and food. In Madagascarin early 2009, for instance, thousands oflocal farmers were protesting the plan toallow a 99-year lease of 1.3 million hectaresof agricultural land to the South Koreancorporation, Daewoo for corn and palmoil cultivation for export to South Korea.This would displace farmers who cultivatered rice, vanilla and other indigenous cropsand who are part of the local Terra Madrefood communities that promote localorganic food production.

Women’s Multiple Roles in Food Security

Women play important roles in foodsecurity as food producers, keepers oftraditional knowledge and preservers ofbiodiversity, food processers and preparersand food providers for their families.Because of their multiple roles, womenare key players in overcoming foodinsecurity.

Women as farmers and food producers

Women produce a large part of the world’sfood. Exact data is very hard to come bybut FAO estimates that women are themain producers of the world’s staple foods:maize, wheat and rice. Overall, womenare responsible for about 50 per cent ofthe world’s food production and, in somecountries of sub-Saharan Africa, womenprovide between 60 and 80 per cent of thefood for household consumption, mainlyas unpaid labourers on family plots.

Women’s contribution to agriculturalproduction varies from country to country,crop to crop and task to task. In Southeast

Green RevolutionWith the increasing incidents of hunger and dependency on food aid in theSouthern hemisphere in the middle of the 20th century, governments, donoragencies and other international organisations collaborated on more intensiveresearch on plant varieties and later promoted the proven high-yielding seedsand farming methods, including the heavy use of fertilisers. Such collaborationresulted in the huge volumes of yields especially of rice and wheat in thefollowing decades. By 1968, United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) Administrator William S. Gaud described thisphenomenon, “green revolution.”

The decline of poverty and increase of incomes in Asia were attributed to thegreen revolution. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) claimsthat the absolute number of poor people fell from 1.15 billion in 1975 to 825million in 1995 while real per capita incomes doubled in Asia between 1970 and1995.

However, the green revolution is also blamed for environmental degradation aswell as income inequities. The heavy use of fertilisers has driven away fishesin the rice fields. High yielding varieties were working only in well-irrigatedareas. Bigger farms also have greater access to these varieties andcorresponding techniques than small farmers.

As Paul Goettlich remarked: “While there can be no argument that the ‘GreenRevolution’ created major increases in shear quantity, it’s been a major disasterfor efficiency, quality of life, productivity, and the environment. The norm todayis monoculture farming, which is founded on highly flawed logic -- massiveplots of thousands of acres planted with one highly inbred crop that isdrowned in highly toxic chemicals and managed by behemoth machinery. Smalltraditional farmers around the world are being driven into bankruptcy andworse.”

Sources: Goettlich, Paul. (10 October 2000). “Green Revolution: A Critical Look.” URL: http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Green-Revolution.htm <http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Green-Revolution.htm> and IFPRI.(no date). GreenRevolution: Curse or Blessing? URL: http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/ib/ib11.pdf <http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/ib/ib11.pdf>

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Asia, women provide up to 90 per cent ofthe labour for rice cultivation. In Colombiaand Peru, women perform 25 to 45 percent of agricultural field tasks. In Egypt,women contribute 53 per cent of theagricultural labour. Men are found moreoften in agricultural wage labour and cashcrop production, while women are mostlyfound producing food for their families andlocal markets.

Women are also found in agricultural wagelabour. In Northwest Brazil, for example,women make up 65 per cent of the fieldworkers in vineyards. In Chile, womencomprise 60 per cent of the contractualworkers in the fruit sector. In Sinaloa,Mexico, women are 40 per cent of the fieldworkers for vegetables and 90 per cent ofthe packers. In Kenya, women provide 70to 80 per cent of the labour in packing,labeling and bar-coding of horticulture.

Women perform many tasks in householdcrop production, including sowing seeds,weeding, applying fertilisers and pesticides,and harvesting and threshing of the crops.They are also responsible for post-harvestfood processing, storage, transport andmarketing. In addition to producing staplecrops, women in many countries also growlegumes and vegetables to feed theirfamilies.

They also play an important role in raisingpoultry and small livestock such as goats,rabbits and pigs. They also feed and milklarger livestock. Their tasks vary fromcountry to country: Latin Americanwomen are less involved in crop productionthan women in sub-Saharan Africa, but arelargely responsible for small livestock. InNepal, women have almost the soleresponsibility for fodder collection forbuffalo while in Pakistan, women providethe majority of the labour for cleaning,feeding and milking cattle.

Women likewise assume significant rolesin forestry, planting and caring forseedlings and gathering forest products forfuel, fodder and food. With most rural

areas dependent on fuel wood, women arealmost always the ones responsible forgathering fuel wood that is used not onlyfor cooking but also for food processing andother basic needs such as warmth, lightand boiling water for drinking.

Small-scale fisheries, which provide morethan 25 per cent of the world’s fish foodcatch, depend on women’s contributions.In most parts of the world, women infishing communities catch fish with netsand traps and by baiting and diving. Theyraise fish and crustaceans; make and repairnets and traps; assist men with launchingand beaching operations, sorting and guttingthe haul; and process and market their catch.

Women as preservers of biodiversity

Women are often the preservers oftraditional knowledge of indigenous plantsand seeds. As the ones responsible forsupplying their families with food and care,they have a special knowledge of the valueand diverse uses of plants for nutrition,health and income. They grow traditionalvarieties of vegetables, herbs and spices intheir home gardens. Women also oftenexperiment with and adapt indigenousspecies. They are involved in the exchangeand saving of seeds. This has importantimplications for the conservation of plantgenetic resources. Unfortunately, theimportance of women’s knowledge andexpertise on biodiversity is oftenoverlooked or ignored by developmentplanners.

Indigenous women of Chile know thevalue of biodiversity and ancestralknowledge. The National Association of

Exact data is very hard to

come by but FAO estimates

that women are the main

producers of the world’s staple

foods: maize, wheat and rice.

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No.1, 2009 WOMEN IN ACTION

Rural and Indigenous Women of Chile,Anamuri, has run a Seed Campaign since2002, with activities that include seedbeds,seed exchanges, biodiversity fairs andecologically-friendly farming groups, whogrow their own vegetables (Alordo, 2008).

As providers of basic foods, fuel and waterfor their families, women have animportant stake in the preservation of theenvironment and combatingenvironmental degradation. Womenrecognise the importance of forests as asource of food, fodder, medicine and manyother products. Mainly responsible forproviding water for the household, womenare acutely aware of the importance ofwater sources. Consequently, women havea particular interest in natural resourcemanagement, sustainable developmentand preservation of the environment.

Villages in the hilly areas of Uttar Pradeshand Uttarakhand, India depend on forestsfor basic needs like water, firewood andfodder. As managers of these naturalresources for their families andcommunities, the women have taken anactive role in conserving them. Alarmedby the deforestation of the area which hadled to floods and landslides, the womenof Dasholi Village began a non-violentprotest in 1976, acting as human shieldsto prevent trees from being cut down.

This has grown into an ongoing naturalresource conservation movement and

spread throughout the whole area. Thewomen first mobilised women’s groups inneighbouring villages and other districtsin the region, involving all women andmen of the communities which werecoordinated by an organisation called theDasholi Gram Samaj Mandal. Thesewomen and their communities havesucceeded in regenerating the forests,reducing the damage from floods andlandslides and making their own work andlives easier (ISDR, 2008).

Women as food processors, preparers and providers

Women are universally responsible forfood preparation for their families andengaged in various stages and steps ofprocessing this food. In many cultures andcountries, women have the mainresponsibility for the provision of food—ifnot by producing it, then by earningincome to purchase it. This applies tourban and non-farming women as well aswomen farmers, and is not limited to thelarge percentage of female-headedhouseholds in the world.

This gender division of responsibilities isoften unrecognised by developmentplanners. False assumptions abouthouseholds as a unit can have detrimentaleffects on food security.

Development planners often assume thatthe increase of household income throughthe employment of men in cash cropproduction will benefit everyone andenable the household to purchase food. Butin many cases, incomes are not pooledalthough women remain responsible forsupplying the food. A classic example isCentral America, where sugar cane wasintroduced as a cash crop employing men.The result was increased money in thecommunity, but increased malnutrition aswell. As men were no longer available forclearing land, women cultivated smallerplots of food crops for their families. Thecash earned by men did not go to thepurchase of food and everyone in thecommunity suffered greater foodinsecurity.

A Telling Tale on Tea.

Women constitute a bulk

of the workers in tea

plantations. Despite the

introduction of fair trade

labeling for products from

farms that observe

environmentally

sustainable and fair labour

practices, many workers

have yet to obtain just

compensation from some

plantations. In this photo

is a tea plantation in

Iringa, Tanzania.

Photo courtesy of MartinBanjamin from World NewsNetwork and WikimediaCommons

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Moving beyond gender analysis

Gender analysis is a tool that developmentagencies began using in the mid-1980s tofind out more precisely the roles and tasksof women in agriculture in relation to thoseof men. Previously, most agriculturaldevelopment projects and resources weredirected to men on the assumption thatmen were the principal farmers. Womenwere assumed to be responsible only forfood preparation and so they became therecipients of nutrition and homeeconomics programmes.

Gender analysis shows that the men andwomen in food production vary from placeto place. Often they are complementary,with men and women sharing or dividingtasks in the production of certain crops.Sometimes men and women have distinct

tasks or responsibilities for different cropsor livestock. In sub-Saharan Africa, forinstance, men on the whole perform about90 per cent of clearing the land and 75 percent of turning the soil. Planting and caringof domestic livestock are shared aboutequally by men and women. Women areresponsible for 60 to 80 per cent of hoeing,weeding, harvesting, transporting, storingand marketing of produce. Women alsoperform 90 per cent of food processing, fueland water collection. They are virtually100 per cent responsible for feeding thefamily.

New understandings about gender and gendermainstreaming

Gender analysis alone is insufficient toenable women to optimise theircontributions to food security. Gender

Chile: Saving the roots of biodiversity—Women farmers promote ecologically-friendly farming and seed preservation*

by Rocío Alorda

Faced with increasing monoculture and use of genetically-modified crops,Chile´s campesinos are fighting to preserve their ancestral seeds by protectingthem from disappearing or becoming contaminated by transgenic varieties.

Since 2002, the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women of Chile, known as Anamuri, has run the SeedCampaign, which includes campesino seedbeds, seed exchanges and biodiversity fairs.

Jacqueline Arriagada, a leader in the Quillon community in the Bio Bio region has fought hard to protect local foodsovereignty and ancestral seeds. Rural women´s organisations are defending local and regional biodiversity. Thewomen participate in ecologically-friendly farming groups, where they grow their own vegetables. Theorganisations are mainly composed of women, for which healthy food for our families is, without a doubt, a greatconcern,” says Arriagada.

As a response to large-scale industrial food production, many organic crops have sprouted up in these communities,producing clean, safe and environmentally-friendly crops.

Francesca Rodríguez, Anamuri’s director, denounces “biopirates” or foreign companies that are stealing campesinofarming methods. Campesino movements and international biodiversity defense movements have identified a seriesof biopiracy groups that travel the world patenting ancestral seeds from rural and indigenous communities.

“What is developing now is ecological farming, which is nothing more than ancestral farming, recovering forms offarming from our ancestors and continuing to develop them and combine them with new practices becauseagriculture has never been static, and has always been in a state of evolution,” Rodríguez says. These methodsproduce safe and healthy foods, work with the land, not simply exploiting it, and are also chemical-free.

In this way, Chile´s rich biodiversity is being protected by those who have traditionally lived off of it and treated itwith respect.

*This is a condensed version of the article by the author, orginially published in Latin American Press. (12 October 2008). URL: http://www.latinamericapress.org/articles.asp?item=2&art=5769

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perspectives – the views of both womenand men – must be taken into account.Women must have the opportunity toexpress their views and bring theirperspectives into development and foodsecurity policies and programmes. Theremust be equitable participation of womenin decision-making and policy-making.

Feminism has brought a greater depth ofunders tand ing about gender . Oneimportant contribution is the concept ofintersectionality: Gender roles cannot beseen in isolation. Gender intersects and isintertwined with other factors such as race,class and ethnicity that affect or evendetermine the condition of men andwomen, their opportunities and choices.

Gender analysis has sometimes had theunintended effect of marginalising womenin development programmes. Oncewomen’s specific roles and tasks wereidentified, projects were devised to directresources and assistance to women.Unfortunately, in most cases, theseresources were miniscule and women endedup being isolated in small income generatingprojects, tacked onto larger developmentprogrammes. There is no doubt that manyof these small-scale projects have providedmuch needed help to women in their tasksof providing food for their families.However, in comparison to overalldevelopment aid and assistance, resourcesallotted to women have been small.

Gender mainstreaming by developmentagencies is the attempt to counter themarginalisation of women in smallprojects and bring them into themainstream of development projects andprogrammes. On the surface, this mayseem like a good idea, but in practice, it ismore complex and may have negativeeffects on women.

Gender mainstreaming can be critiquedfrom a feminist point of view when itoverlooks the importance of firstempowering women to participate indecision-making and policy-making.

While structures, legislation and attitudescan be changed to enable women’sparticipation, women’s empowermentcomes from themselves. For this tohappen, women need to organisethemselves as women to raise theirawareness, build solidarity and mobilise.This has always been true of marginalisedor oppressed groups, whether workers,indigenous peoples or ethnic minorities.It is also true of women.

Feminists also strongly critique the notionof mainstreaming women into apatriarchal model of development. We donot want to integrate or mainstreamwomen into patriarchal systems.Uncritical mainstreaming of women couldmean drowning women in the “malestream.” Only if we can enter themainstream in sufficient numbers andwith sufficient strength and ability tochallenge and change the mainstream, doesit make sense to mainstream women.

As feminist scholar Vandana Shivapointed out, “Gender analysis...needs totake into account the patriarchal bias ofparadigms or models, processes, policiesand projects of global economic structures.It needs to take into account howwomen’s concerns, priorities andperceptions are excluded in defining theeconomy, and excluded from howeconomic problems and solutions areproposed and interpreted.”

Mainstream Obstacles to Food Security

Misguided mainstream economic modelsand development policies have led to thepresent food crisis. Unfortunately, mostproposals that tackle the crisis only promisemore of the same. These are obstacles, notsolutions.

Development policies continue topromote large-scale commercial agricultureto the detriment of small food producers.Agriculture and agricultural trade areincreasingly dominated by large agro-industrial corporations that control crop,

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livestock and fishery production, foodprocessing and marketing as well as seeds,fertilisers, pesticides, and farm and fisheryequipment. Transnational companies arealso taking over millions of hectares of landin developing countries for the purpose ofconverting them to monoculture ofindustrial biofuels. As a consequence,millions of peasants and small farmers,especially women food producers, arelosing the ability to produce and providefood for themselves and their households.

In spite of some very positive efforts,development agencies as a whole have failedto bring substantial representation ofpeasants, farmers, fisherfolk, and indigenouspeople into discussions on how to addressthe problems of the food crisis. Above all,the voices of women food producers and foodproviders are missing.

Climate change is speeding upenvironmental degradation and loss ofnatural resources caused by theintensification and industrialisation ofagriculture, destruction of forests forcommercial purposes, over-exploitation offisheries, the loss of biodiversity due tomonoculture cropping and the decreasing

varieties of seeds. As the United NationsInternational Strategy for DisasterReduction(UN-ISDR) stated: “Climatechange is expected to increase the severityand frequency of weather-related hazardssuch as storms, high rainfalls, floods,droughts, landslides, water stress andheatwaves. Together with sea level risecaused by global warming, suchphenomena will lead to more disasters inthe future – unless prompt action is taken.”

Gender dimensions of continuing foodinsecurity

Despite the two decades of gender analysis,a great accumulation of data andinformation on women’s roles inagricultural production and food securityand the establishment of gender unitswithin development agencies, there is stilla bias toward men. Women’s needs,perspectives and knowledge are not givensufficient consideration by developmentagencies in policies, programmes andprojects – or by NGOs and otherorganisations. This, despite the progress ofwomen in empowering themselves andmaking their voices heard more and morein their communities as well as

Brazil: Peasant womenstruggling for food sovereigntyagainst agribusinessOn 4 March 2008, around 900 women of Via Campesina RioGrande do Sul occupied the 2,100 hectares “Fazenda Tarumã” inRosário do Sul, Brazil. The women cut the eucalyptus and plantednative trees in a land illegally purchased by the giant Finish-Swedish paper and celluloses company Stora Enso. The policeviolently attacked the peaceful gathering, injuring badly as manyas 50 women.

This action was one of the activities organised for the International Women Day on the 8th of March. Women farmers arethe most affected by the current export-oriented agriculture model based on the plundering of natural resources and theexclusion of small farmers by transnational companies. All around the world, eucalyptus plantations as well as othermonoculture plantations (green deserts) destroy the environment and prevent small farmers from making a living andproducing food for all.

From Via Campesina www.viacampesina.org

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organisations of farmers, peasants,fisherfolk and indigenous peoples.

The promotion of large-scale commercialfarming for export is detrimental to small-scale food production for householdconsumption. Women are particularlyaffected as they tend to make up the greatmajority of small-scale food producers insub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.

Lack of land rights and access to resourcesis a major obstacle. Discriminatorylegislation in many countries limitswomen’s access to land, credit andmembership in agricultural cooperatives.Even where legislation does not limitwomen’s rights to land titles andmembership in cooperatives, traditionmay do so. Similarly, women havebenefited little from agrarian reformprogrammes which are often restricted tomen or male heads of households. Thisusually means that women also have lessaccess to agricultural inputs, extensionservices and training which are stillmainly directed to men.

Agricultural research focuses mainly oncash crops that men grow while the foodcrops that women grow are neglected. Andyet the International Food Policy ResearchInstitute (IFPRI) maintained, womenfarmers can be experts in their owndomain. It cited the productive results ofthe collaboration among local womenfarmers with scientists from the RwandanAgricultural Research Institute (ISAR) and

Colombia’s International Center forTropical Agriculture (CIAT) in an attemptto breed improved bean varieties. IFPRIreported, “the selections of the womenfarmers substantially outperformed theselections of the bean breeders. Similarresults have come from India and thePhilippines, demonstrating that a vastreservoir of expert human capital remainslargely untapped: few women areagricultural extension agents, andagricultural research and extensioninstitutions rarely seek the expertise oflocal women farmers.”

Climate change, environmentaldegradation and the loss of naturalresources increases the work load ofwomen who have to walk farther tocollect fuel wood and water. As a resultof deforestation, women have also lostthe source of many food items, medicinalproducts and other products used in thehousehold.

According to the UN-ISDR: “It is a well-known prediction that women in thedeveloping world will suffer the most fromthe effects of climate change. What needsequal emphasis, however, is the fact thatwomen also represent an immense sourceof potential and power to combat theincreased disaster risks that climate changewill bring. Women in developingcountries are already on the front line ofadapting to climate change, withincreasing floods and droughts impactingupon their livelihoods. As pivotalmanagers of natural and environmentalresources and key frontline implementersof development, women have theexperience and knowledge to build theresilience of their communities to theintensifying natural hazards to come.”

In conflict and disaster situations, womenand children often suffer more severelybecause of discrimination that hinderstheir access to resources. Worse, violenceagainst women and children in these areashas escalated tremendously. Targeting

Women also represent an immense source of

potential and power to combat the increased

disaster risks that climate change will bring.

Women in developing countries are already on

the front line of adapting to climate change,

with increasing floods and droughts

impacting upon their livelihoods.

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emergency distribution of food aid directlyto women can help as women are the onesresponsible for providing food to theirchildren and other household members,and are those most likely to distribute foodaid to family members. However,measures must be taken to ensure thatwomen do not become victims of violenceand human rights abuses in situationswhere emergency food aid is distributed(WFP, 2009).

What must be done to ensure food security

Small holder agriculture must bepromoted, including crops and livestockand artisanal fisheries. Farmers, peasants,fisherfolk and their organisations havebeen saying this for years, along withsupportive NGOs and CSOs. In the faceof the global food crisis, internationaldevelopment agencies are also re-lookingat small holder agriculture as a way out ofthe crisis. FAO remarked, “focus shouldbe on helping producers, especially small-scale farmers, to boost food production….”Women food producers must be centralto this focus because they comprise a largeproportion of small-scale and subsistencefarmers and play multiple essential rolesin food security.

Meanwhile, women food producers mustbe empowered and enabled to speak. Theymust be listened to and heard at thecommunity level, within peasant, farmer,fisherfolk and indigenous organisations andat the tables of government anddevelopment agencies at all levels. They

must be empowered to participate indebates, discussions and decision-making.

Organising and mobilisation of women arekey to empowering women’s participationin decision-making in regard to foodsecurity policy and programmes. Ruralorganisations have the potential to promotefood security, strengthen women as foodproducers and empower women toparticipate in policy and decision-makingon food security. Many of theseorganisations are themselves male-dominated, particularly at the decision-making level. This is gradually changingalong with a growing gender awarenessand as women are becoming more active.This may enable these organisations to playa more effective role for the benefit of bothmen and women.

This is a change from the situation at thetime of the WFS and parallel NGO Forumon Food Security in 1996. At that time,not only were there no women farmersrepresented at the government Summit,but very few women farmers were able toparticipate in the NGO Forum. Asignificant exception was a group of womenfarmers, peasants and indigenous womenfood producers from every region of theworld who gathered in a Rural Women’sWorkshop before the Summit and theNGO Forum to strategise and present theirviews at the Forum. This workshop wasorganised by Isis International, ViaCampesina and the People CentredDevelopment Forum.

These women deplored their exclusionfrom the process of food policy deliberationand formulation and declared that “food isa fundamental human right.” Thesewomen drew up a statement for action andstrategies for an alternative policy to ensurefood security. Now that the failure ofmainstream food security policies hasbrought about a global food crisis, it is timeto re-examine the wisdom of these peasant,farmer and indigenous women andconsider their proposed strategies:

Behind Men’s Backs.

Despite their immense

contribution in ensuring

food security especially

through the more

meticulous processes

such as sorting,

preparations and

marketing, women’s roles

are not measured nor

accounted for in surveys

and statistics.

Photo courtesy of RogerSargent

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Empowering and Creative Solutions

Women are rising to the challenges of foodinsecurity and the food crisis. They areintensifying creative and empoweringefforts and actions. These initiatives, smallthough many of them may be, are not onlyhelping women and their families to surviveand cope with the food crisis. They are partof a growing movement and consciousnessin which women and communities are notwaiting for top down solutions, but comingup with their own.

Marilee Karl co-founded Isis International in 1974,

and served as its coordinator for its first 20 years.

She is currently Honorary Chairperson of Isis

International and continues her activism in the

international women’s movement and other social

justice movements. She was co-organiser of the

Rural Women’s Workshop and has worked on food

security issues for many years.

l The democratisation of the access toresources, especially land, water, seedsand intellectual property.

l Promotion of sustainable agricultureand community-based resourcemanagement.

l Establishment of local, people-based tradesystems and infrastructure.

l Empowerment of women through equalrepresentation in decision-makingbodies at local, regional, national andglobal levels.

l Access to education for women andgirls.

l Access to credit and other financialsupport for women.

l Appropriate education, health,recreation, child care and otherinfrastructure support systemsdesigned by and for rural communitieswith consideration for all genders.

n

References

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Feeding America, http://secondharvest.org

International Baby Foods Action Network(IBFAN), http://www.ibfan.org

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