Women farmers in Kenya are hungry for innovative, concrete business ideas. They need more access to credit, training, technical assistance and resources such as fertilizer and seeds. And they’re eager to learn practical ways to invest their savings.
That’s just some of what experts from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) heard from Kenyan women farmers, the organizations that work with them and local technical experts during a recent visit to Nairobi. ICRW aimed to learn from women what they need and what has worked to improve their agricultural productivity and marketability.
ICRW’s David Kauck, Rekha Mehra and Bell Okello organized the visit on the heels of President Barack Obama’s new global food security initiative, which commits to using agricultural development as a way to fuel economic growth and alleviate poverty in developing countries. The effort also strives to improve the productivity and market access of small-scale farmers, who, like in Kenya and elsewhere worldwide, are most often women. The initiative will work with other national governments, citizens and donors to help countries develop their own national strategies to boost agricultural productivity and curb hunger.
“The administration wants a real consultative process, and we’ve essentially taken this at face value,” said Kauck, a gender and agriculture specialist who spent more than a decade addressing agricultural issues in Africa. “Our hope is that we’re going to stimulate discourse in Kenya that will feed into the national planning level processes. But we’re also trying to capture lessons which will feed up to policy makers in the U.S.”
Indeed, through the discussions ICRW learned more about proven farming practices in Kenya that are already benefiting women including experiments with niche commodities such as mushrooms. Kauck said that there appears to be a market for the fungi, which does not require land, but can be grown in a shed.
“We’re looking for ways to help women farmers be heard,” Kauck said. “If we could become a conduit for them, that would be good.”
Gillian Gaynair is ICRW's writer/editor.
1 Comments
Concrete Ideas for Kenya women farmers
I work in addressing women empowerment issues and can say that much as women do not have land and other resources to create wealth in the marketplace, they may indeed not need to own the resources. It is good enough that they control is.
I will given an example I have worked with a milk cooperative that collects and sells milk from smallholder farmers. The cows belongs to the man as much as does the land the household rests on. The man owns the money derived from the proceeds of the cow milk. The women, much as she is the one who feeds the animal owns not the money nor the milk and has to borrow her own expenditure money, even for domestic use from the man.
We changed that. She did not have to own the money or even the cow or the land, all we did is that we helped the farmers to strengthen their cooperative, process the produce, sell the processed and packaged produce collectively and get paid through a savings cooperative or what would be called a credit union in some countries - including the USA.
Much as this did not put a stop to the marginalization, we have something up the sleeve... the women could get credit on the basis of the produce of their farms only if the marketing cooperative could own stores for inputs and household consumption. We changed the strategy of the cooperative and included this. They now take all they need on credit, including paying school fees and whatever else they need because the production from the cow is the product of their work. This has changed the equation totally and the women here are thoroughly empowered. This model can be adopted anywhere, but there are BUTs to it.... The transparency of the procurement of the produce by the cooperative has to be digitized. That is the challenge which I can share in another forum.
Kiringai Kamau
Knowledge and Value Chain Analyst
VACID Africa
Nairobi-Kenya
www.vacidafrica.or.ke
kiringai@gmail.com