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How does reducing household chores cultivate bumper crops for rural communities?

by Jane Lennon | ActionAid
Thursday, 22 March 2018 10:34 GMT

A villager harvests rice crop in the field in Pakistan's Sindh province August 12, 2010. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

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* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

It is vital world leaders and policy makers hear the voices of women farmers and carers, as these women know what works on the ground

World leaders and civil society meet this month in New York to consider the challenges and opportunities rural women and girls face at the United Nations 62nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW62).

It is vital world leaders and policy makers hear the voices of women farmers and carers, as these women know what works on the ground and what needs to be done to empower them. They know first-hand the importance of reducing the unequal burden of unpaid care work, such as cooking and collecting fuel and water to make a better living from more sustainable farming. Mary Afan, herself a farmer and vice president of Nigeria’s Rural Women’s Farmer Forum is attending the event. “You cannot decide for me without me in the conversation. Don’t underestimate what a rural farmer can do,” she says.

In a report launched today at CSW, ActionAid has found that 50 percent of women it polled using sustainable farming methods have increased their crop yields as a result. Using agroecological methods – in essence, returning to traditional farming methods; such as applying good old animal manure instead of chemical fertilisers, learning how to preserve local seeds and utilising plants that improve the soil –  women in rural settings have boosted the productivity and sustainability of their local farming systems.

Mosammat Laizu Begum, a farmer from Bangladesh, is part of a women’s group supported by ActionAid’s Promoting Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment and Rights project, or POWER, working to raise awareness of their rights as farmers and carers. Over 20,000 women farmers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ghana and Rwanda are POWER members. Through it, Laizu has learned sustainable techniques to improve her farming as well as save time. “We learned about soil conservation, water management and access to markets,” she says. “We grew quality vegetables using organic fertilisers and pesticides which sell quickly in the market.”

These older, more sustainable farming methods are also enhancing farmers’ resilience to climate change and managing its adverse effects. “Drought, flood and heavy rainfall are all more frequent now than before,” explains Laizu. “But through these practices, we can still produce good quality vegetables in a small area of land.”

For women farmers to really make the most of these methods, they need to spend time on this work - often a problematic challenge to the gendered, unpaid care work that dominates their day. In poor and rural areas, women and girls must often walk miles to find clean drinking water or firewood, as well as cook and care for children. When their communities are affected by climate change, they must go yet further to find firewood or water, or prepare shelters.

When the POWER project asked 16,000 farmers – most of them women – to keep diaries of their day, it found that women in Bangladesh complete nearly eight hours of unpaid care work each day - nearly three more than men. Pakistani women did ten hours a day.

Encouragingly, as a result of the survey, the men reported becoming more aware of the unequal burden on women, leading them to share cooking, cleaning and childcare work in their families – opening up the possibility for women to put their training in agroecology to use for their communities. “It is very difficult for me to manage extra time for gardening and producing vegetables after completing my unpaid care work,” says Jamila Khatibmer, a Bangladeshi farmer. “My husband now helps with the chores that helps me a lot to have time to work in the garden. But it is not enough.”

The POWER project has already started to show how and why women can be empowered both to tackle climate change, foster their economic livelihoods and rebalance their gendered roles. The next step is putting their voices in the centre of policymaking power, at forums such as CSW62.

As Laizu says: “If the government could arrange childcare facilities for the children or arrange energy-saving cooking stoves, women would save time and spend that time in a vegetable garden. It’s not only me and women farmers like me who should know about sustainable farming practices; the government should also know about this and include these practices in their policies.”

ActionAid is bringing women farmers and our grassroots partners from their rural communities to CSW so that their voices are heard. Leaders need to listen and act now.

Jane Lennon is Communications Officer for ActionAid’s multi country POWER project

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