The need to make women an equal partner in agriculture development (allAfrica)

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http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=26260

Feeding the planet by leveling the plowing field for women

Summary & Comment: Countries in sub-Saharan Africa should be particularly mindful of the need to make women an equal partner in agriculture development. Women farmers need to have a seat at the table, for example, as African governments deal with the surge of land investment. “Today, in much of the world, when the family sits down to dinner at night, the woman has not just cooked the food. She also has likely planted, harvested, milked or butchered what’s on the table”. JK

Author: Idah Sithole-Niang
Date Written: 14 March 2012
Primary Category: Food and Land
Document Origin: allAfrica.com
Secondary Category: Gender
Source URL: http://www.allAfrica.com

http://allAfrica.com/stories/201203141230.html

In 1900, there were a mere 1.6 billion people on our planet. Today, there are seven billion and by 2050 we will be nine billion. One would expect that with such rapid population growth, occurring in the midst of soaring food prices and food-related crises, we would be doing everything we could to increase food security for our most vulnerable people. And yet, incredibly, in areas where the need is the greatest, the opposite often is true. Today, in many developing countries, home to the majority of the world’s 925 million undernourished people, there is a tangled web of policies and practices that specifically and sometimes intentionally inhibit a large group of farmers from producing more food in their fields and pastures. Despite the fact that in many places they often comprise half or more of the agriculture workforce, these farmers face restrictions on their ability to buy, sell, or inherit land and livestock. They often are forbidden from opening savings accounts, borrowing money, or even selling crops at market.

And what is the basis for these self-defeating practices? It is the simple fact that these farmers happen to be women. For example, the United Nations Children’s Agency (Unicef) estimates that women in Cameroon are doing 75 percent of the agricultural work, yet own less than 10 percent of the farmland. And the situation is much the same in Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania. Similarly, in Southeast Asia, women are responsible for 90 percent of the rice production. But in India, Nepal and Thailand, they own less than 10 percent of the land. A study in Burkina Faso links gender-based restrictions on access to labor and fertilizer with a 30-percent reduction in yields on plots farmed by women versus those maintained by men. In Namibia, it is still common for a woman to lose all of her livestock if her husband dies.

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