Food Crises Push Governments to Empower Women Farmers

Call it a silver-lining: Skyrocketing food costs and hunger crises have forced policymakers and aid groups to take a hint. To end hunger and build truly sustainable food systems, they're embracing the global community most responsible for food: women.

When wheat, soybean, corn, and rice prices spiked an average of 43 percent in 2007, international aid organizations began  to think local. Since then, an increasing number have decided to spend more resources developing and purchasing food from local producers in developing nations, writes Rebecca Harshbarger of Women's ENews. These producers remain more insulated from international trade fluctuations and provide indigenous food at lower costs for nearby residents. One group, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), bought 80 percent of its food from local producers in 69 poor countries in 2007 rather than from top rice-producing countries and agribusinesses.

These small-scale, local producers are mostly women. Just as women in the U.S. serve as gatekeepers to most families' food consumption, so do women in developing countries in a much broader scope. Women in developing nations plant, harvest, and process between 60 and 80 percent of food there, typically on small-scale farms as subsistance farmers, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Their labor is vital to their families and communities. In some areas, women's farm labor is necessary for survival: Men in developing nations often leave women and families behind in search of jobs and education, or to join wars or other armed conflicts.

Despite their critical role, societies and policymakers have traditionally overlooked women farmers and providers. Women operate individually on a small-scale and only own about one percent of land; traditionally, policymakers have lacked infrastructure or processes to set up partnerships on that level. Women also struggle for respect and credit due to "interrelated social, economic, and cultural factors that force them into a subordinate role, to the detriment of their own development and that of society as a whole," the FAO says.

While aid groups and government efforts can't force an end to structural sexism, they can certainly take concrete steps to empower women in a way that sticks, and not only in times of crisis. Oxfam, ActionAid, and other groups recommend governments seek out, invest, and partner with women farmers to distribute their crops to the local community rather than rely on Western food corporations to import or grow food there to boost their own profits. Governments and aid groups could easily pay for women's tools like irrigation systems, sell them land, or provide seed money for their own farms and businesses. They might directly purchase and redistribute their products and require that women be part of negotiations. They should also play a greater role in food distribution, as women are often left out of those decisions, too.

This is not just pie-in-the-sky thinking, either — history proves that these initiatives work. In Senegal, the WFP has been purchasing 100 percent of its salt from women salt producers after teaching them how to add iodine to the salt, which helps protect against disease. In Somalia, the Red Cross worked with women to set up local kitchens to prepare food, which was then distributed throughout the community. Aid groups have established similar partnerships in other countries, all of which have enormously improved women's lives, helped feed communities, and benefited the entire food system.

While it's unfortunate that women who produce so much food have been disengaged in the sustainable food policy dialogue, government and aid groups' efforts to bolster women farmers mark major progress. These programs not only help defeat hunger, but they can promote women's well-being, health, education, and independence. Now those are ideals that benefit not only food systems, but global societies, too.

Photo credit: mckaysavage via Flickr