Message-ID: <199509081251.FAA12514@cdp.igc.apc.org> Date: Fri, 8 Sep 1995 05:51:32 -0700 From: Jagdish Parikh <mailto:jagdish@IGC.APC.ORG> Subject: Women: Those who feed the world ea To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
/* Written 5:16 AM Sep 8, 1995 by gn:ipsvic in igc:wcw.ips */ /* ---------- "Women: Those who feed the world ea" ---------- */ WOMEN-FOOD: Those who Feed the World Eat Last, and LeastBy Johanna Son
BEIJING, Sep 7 (IPS) - The story is there in the figures.
Over 550 million women live below the poverty line. That's 60 percent of the world's rural population. It also represents a 50- percent growth since the 1970s, much higher than the 30-percent rate recorded among men.
In many societies rural women are the backbone of agriculture. Their descent into poverty - one result of an increasingly unfavourable environment - spells trouble, experts said here Thursday.
''Women are at the centre of the farming cycle,'' said Pablo Eyzaguirre of the International Plant Genetic Research Institute.
At a day-long forum on rural women, held on the sidelines of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Eyzaguirre and others stressed the role of women in ensuring food security.
Women are the sole breadwinners in one in three households worldwide and are thus a vital key to food security. They produce 80 percent of the food in Africa, 60 per cent in Asia and 40 percent in Latin America.
''Promoting the advancement of rural women is clearly the key to food security for billions of men, women and children,'' Jacques Diouf, director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told the conference plenary on Wednesday.
Their role has been becoming more important as people, mainly men, flee the countryside.
Thousands of people flock to the world's cities daily. ''But how many really think about who will feed them?'' asked Leena Kirjavainen, director of the FAO's division of women and people's participation in development. ''It is the few left behind in the countryside who will feed them.''
Women are also custodians of traditional knowledge in food and agriculture systems and caretakers of different forms of biodiversity, often in charge of selecting seeds.
But rural women's lives are becoming harsher.
The feminisation of rural poverty stems from factors like economic restructuring, limited access to credit, environmental degradation and rising male outmigration, which has also fueled the feminisation of agriculture.
''The most disadvantaged population in the world today are poor rural women, who have been the last to benefit -- or have even been harmed -- by economic growth, technological changes and development processes,'' Kirjavainen added.
And in agricultural societies, loss of land and the destruction of natural and water resources are making women's jobs doubly harder, be it fetching water or firewood or looking for fodder.
At home, women are more likely to spend more of money they make on food and children's nutrition, in many cases eating least and last when money or food runs short.
''In almost every society in the world, women gather the food, prepare the food, serve the food. Yet most of the time, women eat least. A woman feeds her husband, then her children -- and finally, with whatever is left -- feeds herself,'' Catherine Bertini, executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme, told the conference plenary Wednesday.
Agnes Quisumbing, researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute, says women often act as ''shock absorbers for families''. But helping rural women will aid not just the women themselves, but also their own and their children's health, food supply for the family as well as overall agricultural production.
Quisumbing, author of a recent report on 'Women: The Key To Food Security', says improving rural women's plight ''could make significant contributions to the eradication of the food insecurity of millions of people today''.
In fact, she says, there are likely to be major gains in agricultural productivity if governments gave more recognition to women in agriculture and offered them the same inputs, including credit, that are available to men.
Women also have special expertise in biodiversity conservation.
Eyzaguirre says this resource is important in the light of the narrowing of plants' genetic base, which, in turn, is crucial to food security.
''We need to not just conserve genetic resources, but the expertise to do so,'' he said.
Eyzaguirre said women and men have different knowledge and varied approaches to the same crops. Sorghum may merely a grain to most people, but women will often find use for parts of the plant as material for making baskets for instance.
Quisumbing argues that ''while new agricultural research continues to develop new varieties with higher yields and increased tolerance to unfavourable environment conditions, an untapped resource of agricultural growth could lie in reducing the bias against women in agriculture.''
Foremost among these biases are that most farmers are male, says Vidya Stokes of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, the only global grouping of farmers' groups.
''The term 'farmer' makes no distinction between male and female producers; in practice, however, this is not the case. All too often, farming women have no personal identify as farmers and their role is undervalued or simply ignored,'' she added.
Quoting a European woman farmer, she said: ''On the farm everything is counted: crops, trees, animals are counted -- only women are not.''
Even in most farmers' organisations, women are largely unrepresented in leadership posts. This reflects their lower status in society and the lack of recognition of rural and farming women's socioeconomic roles, Stokes added.
A recent FAO study found that only five percent of agricultural extension services are directed to women farmers, although they are the majority of producers. ''This means that men are talking to other men,'' Kirjavainen explained.
It also means women are being left out of training and expertise, when reaching them would help boost productivity. Experts said women's 'human capital' must be increased, including their ability to earn income and improve the health of their families and societies.
Nigeria's Bisi Ogunleye, who belongs to the Network of African Rural Women Assocation, said rural women count access to credit, technology and training among their priorities.
Stokes added that farmers as a whole must organise and then speak up, given the crucial role they play in food security and feeding succeeding populations. ''Farmers have to speak to each other, men or women. After all, farmers are farmers.''