08 March 2011

Women’s Day Brings New Ideas on Feeding World’s Hungry

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute in 2009, and is seen here with women working to advance agriculture.

By Charlene Porter
Staff Writer

Washington — With a little bit of help, female farmers in the developing world could help feed up to 150 million more hungry people worldwide, according to a report issued by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) March 7.

The FAO’s 2010–2011 edition of “The State of Food and Agriculture” (available on the FAO website) makes “closing the gender gap in agriculture” a top issue. The report also presents “a powerful business case for promoting gender equality in agriculture,” said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.

Women who farm in rural areas of the world have less productivity than do men, the report finds, but if they were given improved access to land, fuel, fertilizer and seeds — the inputs of their production system — they would have greater yields, or outputs.

The FAO researchers estimated the effect those increased yields might have on meeting the needs of almost 1 billion hungry people in the world, and found that female-farm production would grow by 20 percent to 30 percent, reducing the number of hungry people in the world by 12 percent to 17 percent.

The first step to increase women’s production is to eliminate discrimination that some national laws allow, said report editor Terri Raney. “In many countries women do not have the same rights as men to buy, sell or inherit land, to open a savings account or borrow money, to sign a contract or sell their produce,” Rainey said.

The report predicts that greater empowerment of women in agriculture would lead to broader social benefits. Female farmers would have higher incomes, and longstanding evidence shows that they’ll spend that money on improving the health, education and nutrition of their children.

FEMALE FARMERS GET U.S. SUPPORT

The U.S. policy on international development outlined by the Obama administration aims “to put women front and center in our development work,” as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a January 2010 speech.

“We’re starting to design programs with the needs of women in mind — by hiring more women as extension workers to reach women farmers, or women health educators to improve outreach to women and girls,” Clinton said. “And we are training more women in our partner countries to carry forward the work of development themselves — for example, through scholarships to women agricultural scientists in Kenya.”

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is a U.S.-backed program supporting female agricultural scientists. Clinton met with participants of that program in a 2009 trip to Africa. She was accompanied by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who praised the program participants.

“The outstanding achievements of the women of the AWARD program serve as a model and inspiration to women farmers all over Africa,” Vilsack said.

By strengthening the skills of women in agriculture, the AWARD program can give African women greater influence in the agricultural sectors of their economies to promote policies in support of the female farmer.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)