Policies meant to catalyze innovation will need to go beyond technology transfer, according to the State of Food and Agriculture report, noting policies must also be inclusive and tailored to local contexts, so that farmers have ownership of innovation and take gender issues into consideration.
“We also know that family farming is much more than a mode of food production, it is also a way of life,” said Marcela Villarreal, Director of Food and Agriculture Organization ‘s Office of Partnerships, Advocacy and Capacity Development speaking at the International Year of Family Farming Nov. 27 closing event in Manila.
During November’s International Conference on Nutrition conference, it was noted that the role of the way food is produced, processed, distributed, marketed and prepared is crucial in fighting hunger and malnutrition.
Many of the recommendations adopted by Ministers at the conference focus on ensuring governments are encouraged to strengthen local food production and processing, especially by family farmers, giving special attention to the empowerment of women.
In fact, women farmers are a key emphasis in Africa.
Whether rice parboiling in Burkina Faso, cassava production in Cameroon or small-scale oil palm processing in Ghana, much of the staple food production and processing in West Africa is carried out by women, notes last year’s UN report: Rebuilding West Africa’s Food Potential.
Gendered Crops
“In West Africa, rice is either a gendered crop (traditionally grown by women as a subsistence staple) or it is a crop grown by all members of a household,” UCLA’s Judith Carney told AFKInsider.
“However, there is a gendered division of labor. This is true of the mangrove rice system, which involves physical work of turning heavy clay coastal soils to aerate them prior to planting (men’s work), women do the planting, men take care of canal construction and cleaning, women the harvesting.”
Carney is a professor at UCLA where she teaches courses on African ecology and development, the African Diaspora, food and environment. She also conducts fieldwork on Africa and the African legacy in Brazil and Mexico and is the author of the 2001 book Black Rice, which chronicles the history of rice cultivation along the rivers of West Africa.
“The problem is farmer access to inputs and marketing infrastructure and policies that fail to target women growers,” Carney told AFKInsider. “The development assistance agencies that promoted green revolution hybrids failed to acknowledge the pre-existing gender division of labor, allowing senior village men to appropriate the new technology and cultivation system to the detriment of improving women’s access to improved land. This led to gender conflict and women’s marginalization from improved rice land, the loss of female rice expertise, and failure to achieve anticipated productivity targets in irrigated rice fields.”
And West Africa could use all the help they can get.
Because of drought, armed conflicts and the Ebola outbreak, more and more farmers are unable to prepare for planting seasons that have come and gone forcing some desperate farmers to selling tools and livestock so that they can feed their families. For those able to work their land, they find a shortage of seeds due to looting and because people are eating them for lack of food.
To support governments in transforming commitments into concrete actions, UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization just established the Action for Nutrition Trust Fund to “mobilize resources for programs and projects that foster enabling environments for nutrition, promote sustainable food systems and nutrition-enhancing trade, increase nutrition information, improve food safety and make nutrition part of stronger social safety nets.”
