The last paragraph of the Boserup reading ("It is the men who do modern things...") reminded me of a few things about food systems, both national and global.
My perception of a farmer in the US is of a good old country boy riding his tractor through a field of corn and I feel that's a pretty stereotypical American view. However, the local food movement, which now has a high profile across the country, seems to have more diversity. I've worked at an organization that, among other things, administered three farmers' markets, and nearly all of the staff were women and so were many of the vendors. The vendors at our local market don't seem to be skewed towards one gender, neither do the customers, and I can confidently say that for every farmers' market I've been to. However, despite their presence - or at least my perception of their presence - women aren't always given their due share of respect and media coverage regarding local foods. A book titled Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, profiles women doing some pretty modern and inventive things in our food system, and is interesting if you're looking for an American viewpoint regarding women and agriculture. Many of the profiled women are working in areas of the US that have high rates of poverty, are food deserts, etc but I don't know how applicable many of the ideas in this book would be applicable to development in the international sense. Sadly, this book doesn't feature many women of color, but if you happen to be interested in this topic, Dr. Monica White researches 'the relationship between race, class, gender, the food system and activism and offers a nuanced analysis of the resurgence of agriculture by communities of color, in both urban and rural spaces.' Her particular focus is on Detroit.
From a global perspective, this post on the Civil Eats blog highlights some ways of supporting women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, which Boserup highlghted as being an area with a "female farming system." This post is pretty basic and I'm not sure how truly innovative some of these so-called "innovations" are, but some of the options for aiding women in agriculture offered, such as family planning, formal agricultural education, and vertical and urban farming, address some of the criticisms of Boserup's work leveled by Beneria and Sen, namely landlessness and reproduction as important factors regarding women, agriculture, and economics.
One last thing - Boserup says that women "represent the old drudgery" while men are given a modernized farming education and are implementing advancements such as fertilizers and such. Climate change is going to affect many areas that are already suffering from malnutrition and food security crises, making hunger-related issues worse. However, the "old drudgery" / traditional ways of farming are much more adapted to withstanding climate extremes than the modern industrial techniques, so maybe we will see a return to looking at those old ways instead of labeling them as backward.
One of the things that has struck me about Jillian's post is when she states that "despite their presence - or at least my perception of their presence - women aren't always given their due share of respect and media coverage regarding local foods." Coming from a country where agriculture is the backbone of the economy, I can identify with this statement. This is because when I look at farming in Kenya, the labor is mostly provided by women. This labor provided by women is normally overlooked even though their contribution goes a long way in contributing to the economy. The productive role of women is overlooked. Most of the farms that these women work on are owned by men (husbands mostly) and hence the end result is seen as the labor of a man. While the government has worked at providing extension services, these services have not benefited these women as most of the extension workers have been male who may discriminate when it comes to training these women on better agricultural practices. For instance if they visit a farm and find a woman, they will ask where the owner of the farm is in this case the man who owns the farm. If the man is not available the extension worker goes away. This begs the questions who is a farmer? The person working in the field or the person who owns the farm? The government from a WID perspective has attempted to incorporate female extension workers as a way of including women in development. Like Jillian has stated," while men are given a modernized farming education and are implementing advancements such as fertilizers and such."
ReplyDeleteTrace, I think you asked a really great question, "Who is a farmer?" Actually, for what I understand, "farmer" has its own standardized meaning. As far as I know, in those old times, we didn't use "farmer" to describe who are doing agricultural work in China. Rather, they have all been labelled as "peasant". The biggest difference between a "peasant" and a "farmer" is that "farmer" is a kind of profession who does business on farming and owns his/her farms. While "peasant" is more like a social class, a really low social class. That's why you would see people using "peasant" as dirty word to abuse others if they have conflict. In other words, identifying oneself with "peasant" in China is not a good thing. People usually avoid of doing this. Another concern is that in China, the owner of land has always been the government after 1949. Even though policy has been changed during those years, individuals can only sign contract with the government to temporarily have the land and run their businesses. The news report that I came across days ago talking about that China's peasants become farmers.(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/EI11Ad01.html)The reason it stated this is because that more and more Chinese peasants realized that farming is profit-oriented. If you want to make money out of agricultural works, it is better to be farming but not being peasant. But my question is "How many peasants in China can have this so-called 'transformation'?" Nonetheless they could temporarily have the land, does that necessarily make them "farmers"? Do they really feel that their identities have been changed in a good way by identifying with "farmer" instead of "peasant"?
DeleteThis conversation is really helpful for that if women achieve breakthroughs in agriculture in either developing or developed societies then why is MDG3 which is related to the empowerment of women measures the percentage of women employed in non-agriculture sector and considers that if this percentage is one of the main economic determinants of empowerment. It might be due to the idea that in most developing countries if women are employed in the agriculture sector it would be own account work meaning that they won’t receive monetary income from that employment. But what strikes me is that if the UN is adopting the notion of empowerment which is related to self-agency an idea that Gender and Development practitioners would call for, why do they measure it using a Women in Development indicator that regards all non-productive work isn’t bettering the status of women. I am always amazed at how the gap comes to play between what scholars call for and what policy makers end up adopting, and of course there is the implementation question whether these policies ever get implemented in a way that achieves the desired outcome. So thanks for opening the discussion on that for that these issues pin down to the critiques of GAD scholars to WID.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that the article on innovations women are adopting in farming mentioned Ghana.
ReplyDeleteLooking at Ghana, it is experience significant problems in regard to farming and land ownership. Despite Ghana's 1992 Constitution specifically including measures against discrimination in the granting of land rights, women in the country still face problems in claiming land as their own. In many cases, women rely on their husbands for farmland ownership.
This article (http://allafrica.com/stories/201206081339.html?page=2) mentions how women tend to work for their husbands on farmland, while their husbands often do not have the weight of this obligation affecting them. It also seems that even when women do attempt to keep their rights to land, they often encounter issues due to the multiple ways which the law allows Ghanaians to deal with issues of land ownership.
The Civil Eats article specifically mentions the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture's (IITA) efforts in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. While it doesn't specifically mention women, this article (http://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2013/09/19/iita-usaid-invest-15m-into-ghanas-agric-sector/) goes a bit more into detail about the IITA's efforts there. The 5 year project mentioned in the article reminds me of our discussion this past week regarding top-down versus bottom-up, grassroots efforts. The article has a quote from the president of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, which has him urging farmers to use the IITA program to their benefit. This has me questioning just how the IITA's efforts operate in actual communities. The Civil Eats article mentions that videos are disseminated in such a way as to allow women to watch them at home or in groups. Is any additional training offered? Are farmers encouraged to share information within communities? The article I linked mentions IITA’s initiative involving the introduction of new methods of farming. Unfortunately, I could not find any specifics on how they intend to disseminate this information. The IITA’s efforts look to be mostly top-down in nature, which may make reaching their stated goal of increasing crop yields more difficult. Information may not be disseminated in such a way that takes specific communities’ contexts into account.
I think research organization like IITA have some obstacles to overcome in implementing programs. Firstly, it's sometimes hard to gather all this scientific research and distill it into an easily understandable, easily conveyable, and yet effective method of communication for groups of people. I would think that the rural populations they're trying to reach are fairly dispersed and may not have reliable transportation and/or communication. Secondly, they're an organization with a large reach, so they're focused on a broader picture, which is fine, but like you say, they might not be disseminating information in an appropriate way for a community. It looks like they have research stations in 11 African countries (and then one in the UK) and operate initiatives in several more. Without taking into account intra-country diversity, that's a lot of countries with different languages, levels of stability, governments, customs, etc to localize programs to and work in. Lastly, having a large organization means that, despite best intentions, often some tasks just aren't feasible. I could see that happening to contextualizing and localizing information on more than a broad regional level. Maybe research for development organizations like this one could create closer ties with grassroots groups or at least some sort of local/regional office or NGO which could maximize both groups' capacities.
DeleteI like the way Zhou differentiated farmer from peasant, especially within the Chinese’s cultural context. Generally, in Afghanistan, my home town, we do not have such a division or perception. However, women and rural people, to a large extent, are viewed and treated as second class citizens. It is embarrassing that even a decade after the fall of the Taliban and with the presence of international friends and troops, Afghan women, especially those living in rural areas, still suffer from nationwide subjugation, imposed subordination, patriarchal practices, fanatical mindsets, heavy practice of customary laws, nationwide gender discrimination, lack of access to means of production including land, education, and employment opportunities.
ReplyDeleteFor centuries, agriculture is considered to be the backbone of Afghan economy despite the fact that lack of national and international investment and more than three decades of internal conflicts and civil unrest destroyed the agriculture sector to a large extent, if not fully. In addition, to war, male-faced monopoly and domination in agriculture sector is quite obvious. I remember reading many studies carried out by national and international agencies in which the role of women in every aspect of life, including social, economic, and political, in general and in agriculture in particular was highly emphasized. Although Afghan women’s role in production work, especially in agriculture is highly emphasized and appreciated, their roles, to a large extent, are still limited to farming and unpaid labor as they still have to work in lands and forms owned and controlled by a male member of their family.
Below is a link to “Gender pathways out of poverty rural employment,” a study conducted in 2009, for those of you who may be interested to know more about women’s roles and the constraints they faced in increasing their productive activity and gaining access to land, livestock and other means of production in Afghanistan.
http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/Papers/23_March/Ashrafi_-_final.pdf