A comment on my second post, relating to female farmers, asked me to consider countries outside of the African continent in order to compare any issues or solutions raised for women in agriculture in other parts of the world. This could then provide some insight into what the future might hold for women in Africa.
The article provided by Baljeet Lakhan (the commenter) (Paul, 2012) examined women farmers in India and their unequal treatment. This has resulted in their exclusion from discussions and workshops organised by the local council that exist to provide farmers with information about new agricultural schemes as well as to train them and provide them with the skills to carry out more innovative methods of farming.
Clearly, the situation described in India is not too different from that in Africa. However, the story is not all doom and gloom, as in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India, over one million women living in 8,000 villages are earning a living under the Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture programme. The primary purpose of this programme was to eliminate poverty, but they have also aided in the reclamation of thousands of acres of degraded land.
Additionally, the personal experience of Sujathamma Begary demonstrates the programme’s success in improving the position of female farmers as this woman is now the co-owner of a three acre farm with four other neighbours and is now formally recognised as a farmer. This programme demonstrates the success that female empowerment can bring when women are included in discussions of agriculture, and by extension, water management issues.
Perhaps a similar programme could be established in many regions of Africa where female farmers are experiencing problems as a result of inequality. In fact, according to an article in the Cornell University Chronicle (Hautea, 2016) the UN even dedicated October 15th of this year as the International Day of Rural Women where the contribution of rural women around the world was recognised for enhancing agriculture as well as improving food security.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN has even suggested that by giving women farmers equal access to training, knowledge and finance, productivity could be increased by around 30%. Female empowerment will not only benefit women, but men also (Hautea, 2016).
For Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, the Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation project team seeks to improve the lives of farmers by increasing gender equality. Their goal is for agricultural practitioners and scientists to improve the productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers by bringing ‘gender responsiveness’ to their work (Hautea, 2016).
Furthermore, the Next Generation of Cassava Breeding project, aims to ensure that the needs of women are considered as, in this case, men and women usually prefer different properties in the crops they consume and grow. This project hopes to use innovative technologies to breed cassava varieties that are useful to both men and women (Hautea, 2016).
Hopefully, this post reveals the potential for a positive future with regard to female farmers in Africa as their opinions, knowledges and experiences are increasingly being considered and used to establish more successful practices and improvements within agriculture. Whilst this post has considered female farmers in particular, it is worth remembering how crucial water is for agricultural practices and so how important the empowerment of female farmers is when tackling water issues.
References:
Hautea, S., 2016. Programs empower women farmers around the world. Cornell Chronicle. Online: http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/10/programs-empower-women-farmers-around-world [Accessed 2/11/16].
Paul, S., 2012. Inequality deepens climate challenge for India’s women farmers. Thomson Reuters Foundation News. Online: http://news.trust.org//item/20121030094100-ik53r/ [Accessed 2/11/16].
This post was really interesting, and the positive outlook for women is something I will also look into! However, do you think that comparing Africa and India, and the two very different cultures they represent is perhaps a too Eurocentric or Westernised approach? I think that, whilst there are elements of the programme in India that could definitely be adapted to fit an African context, we still need to be careful not to understate the issues facing African women and their water supply by comparing it to potentially a very different cultural and social context.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment! I definitely think you're right that Africa and India can't be treated as the same, but I do think that some of the experiences of rural women in India, such as their exclusion, can perhaps allow us to learn lessons that can then be adapted and applied in the context of African rural women. Certainly the issues of women in Africa are different but perhaps in both contexts, the main lesson is to ensure women are included and their knowledges and experiences considered. However, you make a very good point and though this post focuses on positive outcomes, perhaps the UN International Day of Rural Women has not succeeded in all cases because of this tendency to see all rural women across the world as having the same difficulties and facing the same types of inequalities when obviously this is not true. Your comment has certainly raised an interesting debate and is something I will look into as, though India was just an example to show how other rural women in other parts of the world face and even overcome to some extent these inequalities, I certainly don't want to risk falling into a Eurocentric viewpoint.
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