Women farmers toil to expand Africa's food supply
Like many African wom- en, Mazoe Gondwe is her family's main food
provider. Lately, she has struggled to farm her plot in Malawi due to
unpredictable rains that are making her hard life even tougher.
"Now we can't just depend on rain-fed agriculture, so we plant two
crops - one watered with rain and one that needs irrigating," she
explained. "But irrigation is back-breaking and can take four hours a
day."
Gondwe, flown by development agency ActionAid to U.N. climate change
talks in Poland this month, said she wanted access to technology that
would cut the time it takes to water her crops and till her farm garden.
She would also be glad of help to improve storage facilities and seed
varieties.
"As a local farmer, I know what I need and I know what works. I grew
up in the area and I know how the system is changing," Gondwe said. This
year, agricultural experts have renewed calls for policy makers to pay
more attention to small-scale women farmers such as Gondwe, who grow up
to 80 percent of crops for food consumption in Africa.
After decades in the political wilderness, farming became a hot topic
this year when international food prices hit record highs in June,
sharply boosting hunger around the world.
The proportion of development aid spent on agriculture has dropped to
just 4 percent from a peak of 17 percent in 1982.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for women to be
at the heart of a "policy revolution" to boost small-scale farming in
Africa.
Women have traditionally shouldered the burden of household food
production both there and in Asia, while men tend to focus on growing
cash crops or migrate to cities to find paid work. Yet women own a tiny
percentage of the world's land - some experts say as little as 2 percent
- and receive only around 5 percent of farming information services and
training.
"Today the African farmer is the only farmer who takes all the risks
herself: no capital, no insurance, no price supports, and little help -
if any - from governments. These women are tough and daring and
resilient, but they need help," Annan told an October conference on
fighting hunger.
A new toolkit explaining how to tackle gender issues in farming
development projects, published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), highlights the potential returns of improving
women's access to technology, land and finance.
In Ghana, for example, if women and men had equal land rights and
security of tenure, women's use of fertiliser and profits per hectare
would nearly double. In Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania, giving women
entrepreneurs the same inputs and education as men would boost business
revenue by up to 20 percent. And in Ivory Coast, raising women's income
by $10 brings improvements in children's health and nutrition that would
require a $110 increase in men's income.
"The knowledge is there, the know-how is there, but the world - and
here I'm talking rich and poor - doesn't apply it as much as it could,"
said Marcela Villarreal, director of FAO's gender, equity and rural
employment division.
Many African governments have introduced formal laws making women and
men equal, but have troubling enforcing them where they clash with
customary laws giving property ownership rights to men, she said.
Reuters
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