Agriculture

Simple, diverse farming techniques help mother of five in Kenya curb hunger and earn an income.

VILLAGE OF MUYAFWA, Kenya – Much of Janet Wamalwa’s one-acre farm plot lay bare and difficult to cultivate. Like many areas of sub-Saharan Africa, her land in Muyafwa, a village in western Kenya, was plagued by soil erosion and low productivity. And for a subsistence farmer like 32-year-old Janet, when her crops don’t grow, her family doesn’t eat. The mother of five said that they lived on one meal a day during the dry season.

But no more.

Today, Janet’s crops are thriving and her family is eating better because of several sustainable farming techniques she implemented with the help of an international nongovernmental organization, World Neighbors, and Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture.

Janet is one of several women farmers who experts from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) met with to learn more about farming methods that work best for them. Janet’s approach is just one example of how small-scale farmers in Africa – most of whom are women – can use a diversity of simple practices to stave off hunger, earn an income and, ultimately, improve their lives.

“Women like Janet are central to alleviating hunger in rural communities where most of the world’s poor and food insecure people live,” said Rekha Mehra, ICRW’s director for economic development. “They depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods, and small-scale, affordable solutions that increase their productivity can go a long way in improving the quality of life of their entire household.”

ICRW experts plan to take what they learned from Janet and other women during the ICRW-sponsored workshop and share it with Kenyan and U.S. policymakers and practitioners as they develop strategies to boost agricultural productivity.

"Farmers like Janet also can inspire and teach other farmers in similar circumstances how to adopt practical skills and techniques – this is something they all discovered during the workshop," Mehra said.

So what exactly did Janet do to increase her yields and curb her family’s hunger?

In part, she learned to use her land more efficiently by dividing it into several plots to plant a variety of crops. She grows bananas, beans, cassava, groundnuts, kale, maize, tomatoes and sorghum – all of which she uses to feed her family and sell at local markets. Janet also owns dairy goats, whose milk helps nourish her children and whose manure helps create organic fertilizer.

By planting a combination of compatible crops – a process known as “intercropping” – and using the organic fertilizer, Janet’s soil fertility is much richer. The proof is in her yields: In the past, Janet said she harvested some 100 to 200 pounds (45 to 90 kilograms) of maize per season; now she produces about 595 to nearly 1,000 pounds (270 to 450 kilograms).

Meanwhile, she also developed ways to store water at her home, which is located in an area where rainfall is unpredictable and excessive drought is common. She did this by fashioning a roof gutter to collect and direct rainwater into a 100-liter tank. Now, even in the dry season, Janet said she has water that can last up to four days.

Janet also took advantage of the terrain where her farm is located. Although her village does not have electricity or irrigated water, her farm sits on a slight downhill slope. She used the slanted ground to her benefit by digging channels between her plots. These channels collect water and nutrient runoff from the farms above hers, helping to nourish her crops.

The small, relatively cost efficient farming techniques Janet adopted are representative of solutions small-scale farmers in Africa and elsewhere can practice to alleviate hunger – and poverty.

And for Janet, the benefits have been life-changing. Now, she said her children’s overall nutrition is better, in part because the variety of crops she grows allows her to provide a healthy mix of food for her family year-round. Meanwhile, the extra income Janet earns from selling products in local markets means she can pay her children’s school fees. In the past, when she couldn’t make ends meet, the first cost-savings remedy was to pull the children from their studies.

Now, Janet can afford to steadily keep them in school.

ICRW Program Associate Charles Ashbaugh contributed to this report.

As they gather this week for the World Food Prize Symposium, government leaders, multilateral institutions, civil society and private corporations will again discuss international hunger. Their usual response to this issue is to beef up agricultural production by focusing almost exclusively on expanding markets and developing new technologies, such as improved seed varieties. This is necessary, but insufficient. It would be wise – especially now – for world leaders to consider a novel approach. This is our best opportunity in decades to get it right.

To make a significant dent in chronic hunger and  jump-start economic growth, global food security strategies must tackle something less tangible than seeds, less visible than tractors: It's time for an approach that addresses the underlying social inequities between women and men that contribute directly to low productivity farming. Members of the G20 and President Barack Obama already recognize the value in this. Obama's Feed the Future Initiative suggests that if women farmers had the same assets as men, economic output would increase and fewer children would go hungry. The message here? Gender inequality is a drag on productivity, and until we do something about it, we'll keep taking two steps back with each step forward.

To understand why we need to do more for women farmers, it helps to examine their unique place in the agricultural sector, particularly in Africa, where hunger is common and where most women work as small-scale farmers. In sub-Saharan Africa, it's women who often are responsible for ensuring the nutritional well-being of their children. It's women who produce most of the food eaten at home. And it's women who have a strong role in farming crops for sale.

Strategies to boost household food production in Africa and elsewhere oftentimes assume that the  household acts as one unit – that women and men under the same roof split chores, make decisions jointly and share land, equipment and other assets. Decades of field research demonstrate that this is not the case. In most rural farming communities around the world, women hold less power than men. They have less say over household decisions. They have less influence over income. Meanwhile, studies show they labor longer hours than their male counterparts.

And for all their work, women farmers are less likely to see the profits from the sale of the goods they produce. What's more, many women from Latin America to Southeast Asia report that as the value of a particular commodity – that they farm – increases, men take over the marketing and sales.

It's for these reasons that women do not have the same preferences as men. Why should a woman grow a higher-value crop if it will mean more labor on her part, but still the same income – or less? Essentially, many women farmers are locked into low-value, low-productivity farming because their lives do not measurably improve if they change their methods.

One reason that global food security strategies continue to fall short is that they don't recognize these on-the-ground realities of women farmers. Simply put, agricultural investors don't know their primary client. And until food security strategies address the inequities women face – while simultaneously providing them equal access to training, information, capital, seeds and tools – efforts to increase agricultural productivity in some of the neediest corners of the world will fail. Poor, rural families will remain trapped in poverty. Children will continue to go hungry and malnourished.

So to the leaders and decision-makers at the World Food Prize gathering, I say this: Let's get it right this time. Let's dive into those less visible, yet powerful drivers that cripple agricultural productivity. Gender inequality cannot be an afterthought to our food security strategies. It must be the linchpin.

This commentary was featured as a guest column for The Des Moines Register on Oct. 1, 2010.

As governments and donors recommit resources to reduce world hunger, it would be wise for us to reflect on past efforts to spur agricultural development.

The renewed attention to the issue is evident: On May 20, a symposium sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and ICRW, among others, marks the debut of “Feed the Future.” Led by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, the initiative aims to reduce global hunger through agricultural development. The World Bank, U.S. Treasury and other governments have initiated a multilateral trust fund for the same purpose. And the U.S. Congress will consider legislation to support global food security this year.

Now with the spotlight once again on agriculture and hunger, it would serve us well to learn from prior efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to improve agricultural development. The unfulfilled promise of the past can be attributed, in part, to the flawed assumptions about women farmers, who make up the majority of poor, rural populations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Previous attempts to include women in agriculture projects failed to understand that women farmers' roles and responsibilities were as diverse as their male counterparts. For example, in Zimbabwe, efforts to adopt high-yielding maize found that taste was more important to women who grew maize for consumption. Men cultivated the vegetable as a cash crop.

Another analysis found that women are less likely to take risks and are slow to adopt new technologies. This is because they typically have and control fewer productive resources. Traditional roles and relationships between women and men also influence agricultural growth; microeconomic research has shown that gender inequality in farm households can contribute to reduced productivity.

But by heeding lessons from the past, we can identify opportunities to tap into women’s productive potential and increase the likelihood of reducing rural poverty and hunger. However, it requires a sincere commitment this time around: New public and private sector initiatives must involve women as key economic agents of change. Women farmers must be recognized for their contributions to local, national and global food security as well as agricultural and economic growth. Investments must be linked to thoughtful strategies relevant to local agricultural environments, market conditions and social realities, including gender norms.

Finally, donors, policymakers, development practitioners and agribusinesses must significantly shift their thinking about women, food security, agriculture and the global marketplace. Not until our investments recognize and support women’s roles in agriculture – from production and processing to marketing – will we truly achieve success in feeding the world.

A Significant Shift builds on ICRW's decades of research and practical application on how and why to involve women in agricultural development efforts, as farmers, farm workers and agricultural businesswomen and entrepreneurs. Learn more about ICRW's current work in agriculture and food security ››