Polygamy impacts womens' land rights in rural Africa

by Gertrude Pswarayi

Sesedzai Rupuwu owns nothing except the tattered clothes that are neatly packed in her small, faded suitcase.She does not own a home or any household property. She is not allowed to.

Rupuwu has an aged, wrinkled face that betrays her mere 48 years.Rupuwu was married to Chaplin Rupuwu, 52, for 20 years. She gave birth to six children. Like most marriages, she and her husband had a blissful, promising start. They owned little, but were determined to improve their welfare. The couple started a small commercial agriculture business almost two decades ago. They secured a small piece of land and began growing vegetables and other cash crops.

After a few years, Rupuwu decided to go to a vocational training center to learn more about farming. She says her husband was very supportive and encouraged her in her studies. Upon completing her training, the government allocated her a bigger piece of land. She and her husband built a few nice houses and started poultry and piggery projects in addition to their ongoing vegetable crops.

Rupuwu says it was the success of her projects, ironically, that led her to her new life of poverty. Once a successful business woman, today, she is dirt poor.

“I regret ever getting married. It is very painful to lose everything just because I am a woman. I worked so hard to build that home, but I was chased away without a cent,” says Rupuwu.

It was her ambition, she says, that triggered a change in her husband. Once an enthusiastic supporter, he became removed, isolating. Rupuwu says as they accumulated more wealth, her husband began drinking and socializing with other women. At times, she says, her husband would spend days away, enjoying himself with other women at a local business center.

Rupuwu says she had hoped it was just a phase and her husband would realize “the folly of his actions.” “But one day I got the shock of my life when he brought home another woman and presented her as his wife,” Rupuwu recalls.

What followed, according to Rupuwu, was “a serious brawl,” that left her over-powered, alone and poor. She was forced to leave all six of her children and every possession behind.

Despite the country’s urban political turbulence, most rural communities in Zimbabwe are still governed under patriarchal rules that permit polygamy and exclude women from property rights.

According to the Shona culture, children and large family assets, like land and houses, belong to the husband. In a relationship in Shona culture, a woman can only have control over small things, like the chickens, pots and blankets. When a couple separates or divorces, wives typically only take kitchen utensils.

Polygamy is common in rural Zimbabwe. Though prohibited under civil law, polygamous marriages are often performed under the nations customary law, which, ironically, is recognized by the national Customary Marriage Act.

In rural areas, a man is regarded as successful if he has several wives and children. The apostolic religious sect, which has a large following in Zimbabwe, encourages men to take several wives. According to the Social Institutions and Gender Index, as many as 10 percent of women in Zimbabwe are in polygamous marriages.

Wadzanayi Vere, the executive director of  a local non-governmental organization that is working to elevate women’s rights says, “The majority of women have no say in decision-making — from household to national issues. Women do not feature prominently in political, economic and social structures, yet they constitute 52 percent of the Zimbabwean population,” says Vere.

Vere says that women have so far failed to use their majority to influence the passing of laws that abolish some patriarchal practices that hinder their effective participation in the economic sector.

Julie Stewart, a law professor at the University of Zimbabwe feels that women’s rights are recognized under international instruments. However, she notes that although Zimbabwe has ratified the international statutes, the problem still exists because the laws are ignored in rural areas. She says women are often not aware of their rights, which makes them vulnerable to abuse.

“Women have a right to equal participation in land and agrarian reform as well as in land resettlement schemes, adequate living conditions, water supply, transport and communication, nutritious and adequate food and access to clean water for drinking and good sources of domestic fuel,” Stewart says, noting that though the provisions exist on paper, they have been impossible to implement on the ground.

For Rupuwu and other women in a similar situations, the patriarchal systems have proven impossible to rise above. Rupuwu says she will never enter into any matrimonial relationship again. She is certain that she will never have any claims to her children, but says she hopes that they will come to visit her when they are old enough.


Bikyamasr

The struggle for women to own land

by Miriam Gathigah

Even at the best of times, obtaining a title deed from the ministry of lands is a difficult process.

“It has become impossible to reclaim illegally-acquired land as powerful individuals collude with corrupt officials in my ministry to acquire illegal title deeds,” said James Orengo, the Kenyan lands minister.

“It was very progressive for the minister to admit that corruption is rife in the ministry. But that has a negative impact on the struggle to have more women own land. Fighting corruption will take centre stage while land ownership for women will seem like a non-issue,” said Grace Gakii, a gender expert in Nairobi.

“The ministry should have already moved forward to address other key issues such as women and land ownership. Already the constitution states that women too can own land and even inherit, but unless the ministry throws its weight behind the clause, the number of women owning title deeds will not improve,” said a source from the non-governmental G10 alliance, a coalition of 10 women organisations who campaign for gender-sensitive policies, particularly through land decentralisation

In Kenya, only a paltry three percent of women have land title deeds and in Tanzania only one percent own land.

“The economy of most African countries depends on women who are deprived of the right to own land. They toil all day on land that they have negligible control over. They sustain the breadbasket regions of many countries that are dependent on agriculture but their labour is unacknowledged and poorly remunerated,” says Mwanahamisi Salimu, from Oxfam, Tanzania.

According to Elizabeth Nzioki, who has conducted research on women and land in Kenya: “A key development in Kenya land tenure reform was the issuing of title deeds in the name of the “head of the family.” The problem with the legislation is that the titled land is being transferred almost exclusively to male individuals.”

The situation becomes very complicated when a married couple separates because in Kenya, the Marriage and Property Act is silent on how land should be divided under these circumstances. In a separation or divorce, because title deeds are in a man’s name, he is usually awarded ownership of the property.

“In Tanzania the situation is not any different, with only about one percent of women with title deeds. It means that the rest of the female population, who form the bulk of the labour force in agriculture, break their backs but have no say in proceeds from the farm,” Salimu expounds.

“A piece of land is also a burial place. If a woman dies unmarried she is buried in the public cemetery, which basically means she will be ‘forgotten.’ (It is) a possibility that most Chagga women will do anything to avoid, including getting married for it and withstanding unimaginable levels of abuse from their husbands,” Salimu says. For the Chagga people, being ‘forgotten’ in death is akin to being buried like an animal, and people who are buried in public cemeteries are perceived as outcasts.'

But even in countries where the number of women who own title deeds is high, like Zimbabwe, the situation is not ideal.

“In Zimbabwe where 20 percent of women own land, women rarely profit from it. One needs capital to earn money from land,” explains Elizabeth Mpofu, the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Small Organic Farmers’ Forum (SOFF).

Across Africa, there are highly progressive statutory laws that allow individuals, including women, to own and profit from land. However, traditional practices and laws override them.

“Traditional laws rule, especially in countries like Malawi and Tanzania where the greatest percent of land, as high as 80 percent in Malawi, is owned communally,” explains Maggie Banda, a lawyer with the Women’s Legal Resources Centre in Malawi.

In Kenya women with no male children are traditionally barred from owning land, as was the case with Miriam Njoki.

“A woman owns land through her male children. Giving birth to six girls and no boy was like an abomination among my in-laws and I was subjected to insults and ridicule. My husband left me for another woman and my girls got nothing from his three acres (over one hectare),” Njoki says.

Although there are a vast number of cultural reasons that have continued to bar African women from controlling and profiting from land, women are no longer accepting harmful traditional practices and attitudes as the norm. In Kenya, the concept of ‘Chama’ has revolutionarised the financial situation of thousands of women. Chamas are group saving schemes where women save money to buy land for members.

“Through this strategy, I now have half an acre (about 2,000 square metres),” explains Njoki.

In Tanzania, there are extensive campaigns with various stakeholders to ensure that all women, especially in rural areas, are aware of their right to own land. “These women are slowly exploiting various means of controlling land by negotiating with their partners for more say,” Salimu says.

In Malawi, women are working in groups and together are able to control and profit from land by leasing or owning it.

Of course these strategies pose various challenges. “Management is an issue because most of the members do not understand the concept of running a farm like a business. They have grown used to running a farm as if it were just a way of life; tilling, attending to the crops and harvesting without thinking of money matters because the men handle that aspect,” Banda says.

IPS

Alternatives to the dominant agricultural model

by Esther Vivas

Neoliberal globalisation’s mission to privatise all areas of life, including agriculture and natural resources, threatens to condemn a vast part of the world’s population to hunger and poverty. Today it is estimated by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation that worldwide there are 925 million hungry people at a time when, paradoxically, we produce more food than ever before.

According to the international organisation GRAIN, food production has tripled since the 1960′s while the world population has only doubled. However, the mechanisms of the production, distribution and consumption of food serve private interests, preventing the poorest from obtaining essential sustenance.

The access of the local peasantry to land, water and seeds is not a guaranteed right. Consumers do not know where the food that we eat comes from, which makes it impossible to choose to consume GM-free products. The process of food production has been increasingly alienated from consumption and the increasing industrialisation and concentration of each stage of the agribusiness food chain, in the hands of enormous agroindustrial concerns, has led to a loss of autonomy for both farmers and consumers.

Opposed to this dominant model of agribusiness, in which the search for profits has been put before the food needs of people and respect for the environment, is the alternative paradigm of food sovereignty. This affirms the right of local peoples to define their own agricultural and food policies, control their own domestic food markets and promote local agriculture by preventing the dumping of surplus products. It encourages diverse and sustainable farming methods that respect the land and sees international trade as only a complement to local production. Food sovereignty means returning control of natural assets such as land, water and seeds to local communities and fighting against the privatisation of all life.

This is a concept that goes beyond the food security proposals advocated by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in the 1970′s, which had the objective of ensuring the right of access to food for all people. Food security has not served as an alternative paradigm in that it does not question the current model of production, distribution and consumption and has been stripped of its original meaning. Food sovereignty includes this principle, that everyone must eat, while also opposing the dominant agroindustrial system and the policies of the international institutions that give it support.

Achieving this goal demands a strategy of breaking with the neoliberal agricultural policies imposed by the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These organisations’ imposition of free trade agreements, structural adjustment, external debt and so on have served to erode people’s food sovereignty.

However, the demand for food sovereignty does not imply a romantic return to the past, but rather a regaining of awareness of traditional practices in order to combine them with new technologies and new knowledge. Neither should it consist of a parochial approach or a romantic idealisation of small producers but rather an entire rethinking of the global food system in order to encourage democratic forms of food production and distribution.

Promoting the construction of alternatives to the current agricultural and food model also involves an awareness of the role of gender; recognising the role women play in the cultivation and marketing of what we eat. Between 60% and 80% of the burden of food production in the South, according to FAO data, falls on women. They are the main producers of staple crops like rice, wheat and maize, which feed the poorest populations in the global South. But despite their key role in agriculture and food, they are, along with children, those most affected by hunger.

Women in many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America face enormous difficulties in accessing land, getting credit, etc. But these problems do not only exist in the South. In Europe many farmers have little or no legal status, since most of them work on family farms where administrative rights are the exclusive property of the owner of the farm and women, despite working on it, are not entitled to aid, land for cultivation, milk quotas, etc.

Food sovereignty has to break not only with a capitalist model of agriculture but also with a patriarchal system that is deeply rooted in a society that oppresses and subordinates women. Any notion of food sovereignty which does not include a feminist perspective is doomed to failure.

The concept of food sovereignty was first proposed in 1996 by the international movement Via Campesina, which represents about 150 farmers’ organizations from 56 countries, in order to coincide with the World Food Summit of the FAO in Rome.

Via Campesina was formed in 1993, at the dawn of the antiglobalisation movement, and gradually became one of the key organisations in the critique of neoliberal globalisation. Its rise is an expression of peasant resistance to the collapse of the countryside economy, caused by neoliberal policies and their intensification with the creation of the World Trade Organization.

Membership of VC is very heterogeneous in terms of the ideological origin of the sectors represented (landless, small farmers), but all belong to the rural sectors hardest hit by the advance of neoliberal globalisation. One of its achievements has been to overcome, with a considerable degree of success, the gap between the rural North and South, articulating joint resistance to the current model of economic liberalisation.

Since its inception, Via has created a politicised "peasant" identity, linked to land and food production, built in opposition to the current model of agribusiness and based on the defence of food sovereignty. It embodies a new kind of "peasant internationalism" that we can regard as the peasant component of the new internationalised resistance represented by the global justice movement.


One of the arguments used by opponents of food sovereignty is that organic farming is unable to feed the world. However, this claim has been demonstrated to be false by the results of an extensive international consultation led by the World Bank in partnership with the FAO, United National Development Programme, UNESCO, representatives of governments, private institutions, scientists, social interest groups, etc. This project was designed as a hybrid consulting model, involving over 400 scientists and experts in food and rural development over four years.

It is interesting to note that, although the report was supported by these institutions, it concluded that agroecological production provided food and income to the poorest, while also generating surpluses for the market, and was a better guarantor of food security than transgenic production.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology (IAASTD) report, published in early 2009, argued for local, peasant and family production of food and the redistribution of land to rural communities. The report was rejected by agribusiness and filed away by the World Bank, while 61 governments approved it quietly, except for the U.S., Canada and Australia, among others.

In the same vein, a study by the University of Michigan, published in June 2007 by the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, compared conventional agricultural production to organic. The report concluded that agroecological farms were more highly productive, and more capable of ensuring food security throughout the world, than systems of industrialised farming and free trade. It estimated that, even according to the most conservative estimates, organic agriculture could provide at least as much food as it produced today, although the researchers considered as a more realistic estimate that organic farming could increase global production food up to 50%.

A number of other studies have demonstrated how small-scale peasant production can have a high performance whilst using less fossil fuel, especially if food is traded locally or regionally. Consequently, investment in family farm production and ensuring access to natural resources is the best option in terms of combating climate change and ending poverty and hunger, especially given that three-quarters of the world’s poorest people are small peasants.

In the field of trade it has proved crucial to break the monopoly of large retailers, and to avoid large-scale distribution circuits (through the use of local markets, direct sales, consumer groups and cooperatives, and so on), thereby avoiding intermediaries and establishing close relationships between producer and consumer.

Alternatives to the dominant agricultural model, which generates poverty, hunger, inequality and climate change, do exist. They necessitate a break with the capitalist logic imposed on the agricultural system and an insistence on the right of the peoples of the world to food sovereignty.

Socialist Resistance

Mali: Shea production vital to women's incomes

by Soumaïla T. Diarra

Across the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa, the shea tree prized by women, who produce a butter from its nuts that is a key ingredient in food and cosmetics. However, drought and diseases threaten this source of income.

"Shea represents 80 percent of rural women's income," says Fatoumata Coulibaly, explaining how women go out to collect the nuts and later process them to make shea butter. Coulibaly is a member of La Maison du karité ("the House of Shea"), a women's group in Siby, a village in southern Mali. She was interviewed during Global Shea, an international forum on shea trade that took place in mid-March in Bamako, the Malian capital.

Shea trees grow wild in West Africa. According to experts, they take 25 years to reach maturity and their lifetime can span two centuries. In the rainy season, women pick the trees' fruit – a sweet pulp wrapped around an oily kernel. In the dry season, they sell a portion of their nuts to international companies and process the rest themselves for sale on the local market.

In West Africa, shea butter is used in cooking by nearly 80 percent of the rural population. Its also used in traditional medicine, and the wood from the tree is prized as fuel.

The trees many uses have assured its protection for centuries by local populations, some of whom even consider it sacred.

"We treat shea with respect. That is why we organise ceremonies when shea treas reach maturity," said Nayouma Coulibaly, a woman from Tioribougou, a village in southern Mali.

But now, according to the Albert Schweitzer Ecological Centre, a Swiss-based nongovernmental organization (NGO), shea trees face many threats such as drought, diseases and over-use as a source of firewood.

Not all observers agree that there is a problem.

"I don't think there's cause to worry. Actually, the number of shea trees is on the rise, because people have now started planting them. I've done so myself," said Seydou Kone.

Kone is a trade technician with AMEPROC, Mali's association of exporters of agricultural products, headquartered in Bamako. AMEPROC is combatting shea tree disappearance and disease by conducting public education in rural areas where shea trees are threatened, training local populations on shea planting and protection.

Among the roughly 16 countries where shea grows, Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin and Nigeria represent the bulk of world production. Mali occupies an important position in the market.

"With nearly 150 million shea treas, Mali is ranked second largest producer after Burkina Faso with an output of about 60,000 tonnes per year," Kadidiatou Lah said. Lah is a shea butter exporter based in Bamako. She's also the president of Mali's National Federation of Shea Exporters, which trains rural women in shea trea planting.

The growth of international demand for shea outside Africa is explained in part by its expanded use by the food industry in some developed countries. In 2000, a decree came into effect in Europe allowing chocolate manufacturers to use a limited amount of fat other than cocoa butter in their products, up to five percent.

This change in regulations, which had previously been the case in Japan, the United States and Eastern Europe, has opened up new opportunities for shea. "Today countries from all continents import shea butter or shea nuts to extract butter," confirmed Lah.

Local shea producers have no influence over the price fetched by shea nuts and butter internationally. "The prices change frequently on the international market, but at the moment a kilogramme of shea nuts costs between 500 and 600 CFA francs (just over one U.S. dollar)," said Kone.

Large companies prefer to buy their shea nuts from villages through local buyers who roam the countryside. However, these intermediaries make far more profit from the trade than rural women producers.

"The local market is different," Kone said. "In Mali, the current price of a kilogramme of shea nuts is 75 CFA francs (15 cents U.S.)."

Large firms are reluctant to buy shea butter produced by local rural women due to its strong smell. Industry professionals, explain that this smell can be avoided by following certain procedures during processing.

But the extraction method used by most Malian women is not very efficient, extracting roughly 27 percent of the oils from the nuts, compared to 40 to 50 percent achieved with industrial technology, experts say.

However, locally produced butter has seen improvements. In addition to serving the local market, fair trade schemes have allowed women to export valuable finished product to large markets in developed countries.

IPS

Severe drought causes social shifts amongst Kenyan pastoralists

Traditionally, life for women in pastoralist communities in the central Kenya region of Laikipia revolves around taking care of their children, leaving the men to provide for the family. However, a prolonged drought in the area, which has resulted in significant livestock deaths, has seen these roles reversed, with more women venturing into small-scale business to feed their families.

Government officials estimate that at least 600,000 livestock (cattle, sheep and goats) have died in the past three months in the area. Dorcas Piroris, 50, from Olkinyei in Laikipia North District, is selling tourist trinkets to supplement her family’s income.

Piroris said, "This is the worst year that I have witnessed in my life; everything seems to be going against tradition and we do not know when things will improve. As you can see, there are no animals around this place. When the livestock started dying due to drought, our men took them far away to Mt Kenya in search of pasture. Some people had lost more than half of their herds by the time they left for the mountain.

"After a very long journey, some of our men, including my husband Solomon Lelongo, came back empty-handed; all the animals had died in the forest due to the cold, harsh weather there.

“As a result, an [NGO] mobilized women to seek alternative ways of feeding their families as we wait for the rains. I started selling these wares [walking sticks, leather belts and other items, all decorated with colourful beads] to get cash to buy essentials for my husband and our seven children because the relief supplies of maize, beans and oil that we get from the government and other donor agencies are not enough.

“I am finding it difficult since all along, since my childhood when I was married off by my parents, I have been relying on my husband to provide for me and these wares were the preserve for people with curio shops. I and some of my friends have yet to get used to the new role and we are hoping it will rain soon so that things can go back to the way they were.

"Life is difficult since most people do not have money to buy our wares. We usually send some of our colleagues and young men to Nairobi or Nakuru to buy the materials we use to make these wares. Some of us have yet to recoup what we initially spent when we started this job, nearly two months ago.

“The major problem is getting customers because we do not have a selling point like those in curio shops. We rely on people to come to our homes. The few who do, buy our wares cheaply, thereby giving me a very small profit margin.

“Today, I came to Dol-Dol following an invitation by a group [an NGO] that came up with this idea and assisted us in starting this business.

“Although it is dry at times, I have never witnessed a situation where we are forced to buy milk for our children as is the case now. How I hope it will rain soon."

IRIN

ICRISAT develops techniques for soil reclamation in West Africa

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has developed an innovative technique of reclaiming severely degraded, abandoned farmlands in Western Africa successfully bring them back into profitable agricultural production.

This accomplishment is significant for the semi-arid Sudano-Sahelian region, whose few arable lands are under extreme pressure to produce more food for a growing population in the backdrop of climatic variations that threaten the region’s fragile agricultural production, and food security.

Additionally, the recovered degraded lands, which had been allocated to women in a moribund state, are giving back Niger’s largely marginalised women their socio-economic rights to making a livelihood through agriculture.

“In dry West Africa, studies have shown that between 13 and 15 percent of children are suffering from acute nutritional deficiency”, says Prof Dov Pasternak, a scientist at ICRISAT. “By working with women to grow indigenous vegetable and fruit trees, we have not only restored the self-worth of women but also enabled them to better care for their children and families as well as make some money on top of it all.”

According to Prof Pasternak, more than half of the Sahelian soils are severely degraded, continuously losing nutrients and organic matter through wind and water erosion resulting in hard-to-plough encrusted lateritic soils that characterise many abandoned farms across Niger. Droughts account for crop failure in two out of every five years.

Extremely adverse weather conditions in the Sahel and growing population pressure are adversely affecting agricultural production in the Sahel. In Niger, population pressure has progressively led to highly fragmented farm holdings whose ownership and farming rights are generally vested in men. This has in turn systematically edged women out of farming leaving them without means of adequately caring for their families, or making an income.

“(Some areas of Niger) are witnessing emergence of a first generation of women who do not work the land. This process begins when a woman’s gamana is cultivated by her husband because it is so small that her labour is only required for certain types of harvest. In Jiratawa, we found a second generation of landless women who have never farmed because they never had the opportunity to help their mother in her gamana as she was landless too. They don’t even know how to sow seeds!” a study undertaken by the International Institute for Environment and Development says.

In an effort to keep women farming and to avert their impoverishment, the Government of Niger, in 2004, enacted a Rural Code to govern access to and use of land and other natural resources. Land tenure is governed by a variety of unsynchronised laws ranging from customary, Islamic and civil laws. The Rural Code is envisioned to enable women to directly own and use land as they wish. But initial trends show that more often than not women are being allocated the least productive, often abandoned, lands that men cannot put to any use.

ICRISAT is developing a range of techniques to help Niger’s women transform their erstwhile unproductive, impenetrable crust-lands into productive farmland. The techniques present an integrated system to food production and include rebuilding the fertility of the degraded soils, water management for this semi-arid zone and general land reclamation using drought-tolerant tree species.

ICRISAT scientists have taught women how to create a favourable medium for planting crops that will enable effective rooting, as well as how to manage the soils to prevent water-logging. Farmers have learnt how to harvest rain-water on-farm using micro-catchments or planting pits known as zai holes, which are able to hold water for prolonged periods after the rains. The zai holes also hold soil and compost to support the growth of locally adapted, deep-rooting and highly nutritious fruit and vegetable trees such as the Pomme du Sahel, Ziziphus Mauritania, and the Moringa, Moringa stenopetala.

The Pomme du Sahel fruit is rich in iron, calcium, phosphorus and has ten times as much Vitamin C as the regular apple, while the Moringa leaves, Niger’s most popular vegetable, has seven times as much Vitamin C as oranges, four times as much Vitamin A as carrots, four times as much calcium as milk, thrice as much potassium as is found in bananas and twice as much protein as is found in milk.

These and other crop trees under test for reclamation of Western Africa’s degraded farmlands are typically tolerant to drought, high soil salinity and water-logging. They hold the promise of transforming vast swathes of degraded land in West Africa into Africa’s new horticultural front. ICRISAT estimates the value of fruit and vegetable produced from these indigenous tree crops at about USD1, 200 per hectare.

About ICRISAT: The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is a nonprofit, non-political organization that does innovative agricultural research and capacity building for sustainable development with a wide array of partners across the globe. Its mission is to help empower 600 million poor people to overcome hunger, poverty and a degraded environment in the dry tropics through better agriculture. ICRISAT, is one of 15 centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

ICRISAT

African Development Bank creates fertilizer subsidy facility

The annual meeting of the governors of the African Development Bank (ADB), held in Maputo on May 14 and 15, approved the creation of an African Fertiliser Facility, that will make fertilizer available to African farmers at affordable prices.

The decision was not unanimous. The chairperson of the ADB Board of Governors, Mozambique's Planning and Development Minister Aiuba Cuereneia, told reporters that the United States was opposed to the fertilizer facility, "but the Board of Directors voted for it."

"We are now seeing international organisations talking about subsidizing agriculture", said Cuereneia. "This used to be taboo, but now it is being accepted. You can't manage agriculture commercially without subsidies."

At a closing press conference, the ADB President, Donald Kaberuka, noted that African agriculture used to suffer from low producer prices, and farmers had little incentive to produce. Now, with the sharp rise in grain prices internationally, there were incentives - but fertilizer prices had also soared.

"For the signals to reach the farmers, something has to be done", said Kaberuka. "There must be some degree of fertilizer subsidy." Such subsidies should be "market-smart" and targeted, and they would require support from international institutions.

He recognised that "fertilizers are not enough. If there is no road, you will produce tomatoes, but they will rot. For markets to operate, the infrastructures must be working - the roads and the irrigation system - this will prevent the crops from rotting before they reach market."

Kaberuka also insisted that gender issues must be factored into the approach to agriculture, "If we are to succeed, we must bias policy towards Africa's women farmers, who are the majority of the continent's farmers", he said. "Poverty has a woman's face."

"The time has come for African agriculture to become a viable business", he stressed, "and it is thus very important that we allow markets to function". He insisted that food security was not a problem that could be solved by protectionist measures, and so called on those countries that have imposed bans on grain exports "to allow the markets to work."

But they would not work by relying on the private sector alone, and Kaberuka repeated his call of the previous day "to rebuild Africa's Ministries of Agriculture", which were crucial for planning and coordination. But he insisted that the ADB had no intention of dictating how a green revolution in Africa should be run.

allafrica.com

IFAD project seeks to assist Angolan smallholders be more productive

Some 126,000 farming families in Angola will benefit from a $49.5 million United Nations-backed agreement signed to improve agricultural productivity and revitalize markets.

After almost three decades of war, peace in the southern African country has opened the way for reconstruction, but 68 per cent of Angolans live below the poverty line and 15 per cent of households live in extreme poverty.

"Angola could be a rich agricultural country, but the war and lack of investment have severely held back the sector," said Carla Ferreira, country programme manager for the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which fights rural poverty.

"However, we see a significant potential to increase agricultural production by expanding the average area that each farmer cultivates, increasing labour productivity and making markets more efficient. That is what this project is going to tackle," she added.

Under the agreement signed at IFAD's Rome headquarters by Angolan Ambassador to Italy Manuel Pedro Pacavira and IFAD President Lennart BÃ¥ge, the market-oriented Smallholder Agriculture Project will be partly financed by an $8.2 million loan from the Fund.

The World Bank will contribute $30.1 million and Japan another $4 million. Angola will provide $4.1 million and other project participants the equivalent of $3 million.

A large proportion of beneficiaries consist of recently returned persons who have taken up farming. The project activities will begin in the province of Bié, and will later be expanded to Malanje and Huambo.

The project will help communities to identify needs for small-scale agricultural investments, which will be funded through matching grants. It will build the capacity of private-sector service providers and improve links with other development organizations. The project has a gender-sensitive design, and includes budgeting for childcare to enable women to attend training courses.

To improve farmers' skills and knowledge, the project will set up farmer field schools, hold workshops, exchange visits and study tours at both the municipal and provincial levels to share lessons in project implementation in the different target areas.

With this project, IFAD has provided a total of $44.3 million for five projects in Angola, directly benefiting 311,800 households.

allafrica.com

Gates Foundation funds mechanization for women farmers in W. Africa

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a US$19 million grant to a poverty reduction and women's empowerment project supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and designed to boost the productivity and income of women farmers using low-cost, mechanized power.

The four-year grant will help establish 600 new sustainable, rural agro-enterprises in the West African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal. The center piece of the project is the multifunctional platform (MFP), a diesel-run engine mounted on a chassis to which a variety of processing equipment can be attached, including cereal mill, husker, battery charger, and joinery and carpentry equipment. At least 24 of these MFPs will be biofuel-based.

Compared to developed countries where household chores can happen at the flick of a switch, in rural homes across Africa with no connection to the electricity grid (and where none is planned), preparing a meal is a laborious task for women. They spend up to six hours a day collecting firewood, fetching water, husking and pounding grain, with no time left for outside employment. Girls often perform poorly in school due to inconsistent attendance and find themselves forced to drop out to help their mothers.

The multi-functional platform takes domestic tasks like milling and husking sorghum, millet, maize and other grains, normally done with a mortar and pestle or a grinding stone, and mechanises them, making them profitable economic activities. The platform can also generate electricity for lighting, refrigeration and to pump water, which helps provide clean water to communities along with improved health care and education services.

Announcing the initiative in Dakar, Senegal, UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis explained that due to lack of access to modern energy services, women are stuck in a vicious cycle of illiteracy, ill health and poverty from one generation to the next. 'By investing in this simple power source for rural communities, women no longer need to spend all their time grinding grains or pumping water. They have more hours in the day to develop profitable activities that could boost their productivity, enabling them to sell better quality products and increase their income using low-cost, effective technology,' he said. As part of the enterprise projects, UNDP and its extensive network of local NGOs will back the women's groups with literacy and management training and support.

'This project will employ cost-effective technology to significantly improve the lives of women in West Africa by freeing up time—their scarcest resource—and enabling them to sell higher value products at market more often, thus increasing their income and improving lives,' said Dr. Rajiv Shah, director of agricultural development, Global Development Program at the foundation. 'Through this effort, we hope to learn whether these platforms could reach an even larger number of communities in Africa.'

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Agricultural Development initiative is working with a wide range of partners to provide millions of small farmers in the world's poorest areas with tools and opportunities to boost their productivity, increase their incomes, and build better lives for themselves and their families.

The benefits of the MFP have already been proven in parts of West Africa, where processing shea nuts for its butter is a common economic activity. In Mali, for example, crushing 10 kilograms of shea nuts manually yields 3.5 kilograms of butter in eight hours in comparison to 4.5 kilograms in four and half hours using the platform.

In Senegal, Mrs S. Sakho of Batantinty, explains that before the platform was introduced in her village she rarely earned more than 25000 CFA (US$55) from processing and selling shea butter. 'With the platform I easily earn 100,000 CFA (US$220) at the end of the harvest. The yield is high because the time is there. The platform has improved my life. I spend the earnings for the children's education and clothing; I no longer look like a peasant,' she said.

The initiative is also expected to contribute to the objectives of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional energy access policy to meet the Millennium Development Goals, which was adopted in January 2006 with the aim of providing rural and peri-urban populations with energy services including mechanical power for agro-processing. It is hoped that the lessons learned from this initiative will serve as the basis to expand the approach across Sub Saharan Africa, where an estimated 100 million people in rural areas could benefit.

UNDP

Tradition, lack of capital keep women out of fishing business

Grace Namalwa tries to calm her baby on the back as she cleans fish nets at Kasenyi Landing Site in Uganda. At the end of the day, she will be paid a paltry sum, by the owner of the nets, which she will supplement with the sale of her body. That is how most women in fishing communities survive.

Dr. Lucas Ndawula, the deputy director of the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute, says about 700,000 fishermen and 1.2 million people directly benefit from the industry.

According to the Fisheries Sector Strategic Plan, although, about 70% of the fish business is conducted by women, men benefit more from it.

"Men give us fish to smoke and we sell it for them," says Naome Nalwadda, a trader. "You have to befriend many men to get fish to sell. You cannot depend on only one fisherman," says another woman.

This, in reality, means sex for fish and there are several reasons for this.

Fishing is a labour-intensive activity. "Women cannot row boats or pull nets out of the water. That is why they remain at the shores," says Muzamili Lwanga, a fisherman.

A report by the Poverty Eradication Action Plan about lives of fishing communities shows that traditions prevent women from taking a dominant role in fishing. Just like hunting, there is a belief that women can bring bad luck if they went fishing. As a result, women were not even allowed to own boats or anything to do with getting fish out of the water, until a few years ago.

According to a survey carried out in 1991 at various landing sites, only 7% of the boats were owned by women. However, the number has grown over the past 15 years, thanks to various interventions.

According to research at Kasenyi, of the 200 boats and engines that operate there, only 30 were owned by women. "We employee men to fish for us," says Margaret Nakyejjwe, a boat owner who sold part of her land to buy boats. "I have to be around when my fishermen return to see how much fish they have caught," she explains. She then shares the day's catch with her male employees.

Getting capital to buy boats, nets and engines is a big challenge for women. However, some women have formed groups to solve this problem. For instance, the Katosi Women Fishing Development Association at Katosi landing site helps women get loans to buy boats, nets and engines and to demand for rights on the waters.

There is evidence that households where women are directly involved in fishing are better than those where only men are involved. "There is a greater willingness and opportunity to accumulate savings and invest in assets among households where both the men and women own boats," says the PEAP report.

More women are also involved in fish farming (aquaculture). Aquaculture has been developing steadily across the country. Many of the fish ponds were started by women's groups.

Overall, tradition, lack of capital and the fact that fishing is a manual job keep women out of the profitable fishing business.

New Vision

Gates Foundation funds $13 million CGIAR program to train African women agricultural researchers

There is a disparity between the role of African women in farming and their limited presence in the agriculture sciences. To confront it, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Gender & Diversity Program has launched a $13 million effort that will support the fast-tracking of careers of at least 360 African women in agricultural research.

The Nairobi-based African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) program is being funded with a four-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Participating countries include Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

Women farmers produce 60 to 80 percent of crops critical to feeding the people of Africa. Yet women comprise less than 20 percent of agricultural researchers.

“We cannot fight hunger and poverty in Africa, particularly in the struggling regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, unless women have a strong voice not just on the farm, but in the lab,” said Vicki Wilde, head of the CGIAR Gender & Diversity Program. “It is urgent that we increase the number of African women in agricultural research. We are thrilled that the Gates Foundation is funding our work in this area.”

“Women bear much of the responsibility for cultivating crops in Africa and they face challenging and changing conditions,” said Rajiv Shah, director of agricultural development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “African women scientists can help bring practical, sustainable improvements to the African farm sector so smallholder farmers - most of whom are women - can build better lives for themselves and their families.”

The AWARD program will address many of the barriers—including a lack of role models and mentors, and institutional biases—that in the past have prevented African women from playing a more active role in agricultural research.

“It is a plain fact that the young woman scientist continues to face a scary and tormenting situation in deciding whether she should pursue her career as a scientist or maintain her family,” said Miriam G. Kinyua, Associate Professor of Agriculture at Moi University. “I believe it should not be so. I believe that with the right balance, she can succeed in both.”

While other programs provide academic support, AWARD is different. The program nourishes the African talent pool with a career development series designed to strengthen both science and leadership skills of women in agricultural research at three critical career junctures – upon completion of their BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees.

Specifically, the program seeks to achieve a:

25 percent increase in African women with BSc degrees participating as members of research teams in at least 20 agricultural institutions in sub-Saharan Africa; 50 percent increase in African women with masters degrees managing research teams and producing improved farm technologies at these institutions; 50 percent increase in African women PhDs serving in influential leadership roles and as role models and mentors to younger women; Significant increase in the number of African girls and young women inspired to pursue careers in agricultural research and development; and Significant increase in the number of men and women aware of the importance of women’s voices and contributions to agriculture in Africa.

CGIAR

Hunger, HIV/AIDS and agriculture in Southern Africa

Hunger and HIV/AIDS are reinforcing each other in Southern Africa, "leading to a potentially tragic new level of famine," says a book published by a regional agricultural think-tank. The World Bank's annual report, released last week, also raises concerns over the pandemic's impact, pointing out that most people affected by HIV and AIDS depend on agriculture.

Food consumption has been found to drop by 40 percent in homes afflicted by HIV/AIDS, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO); globally, Southern Africa is the region most affected by the pandemic.

The situation has been exacerbated by severe drought in Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique this year, with significant production deficits and high staple food prices limiting market access for households that have already run out of food they have managed to grow themselves.

AIDS has killed around 7 million agricultural workers since 1985 in the 25 hardest-hit countries, mostly in east and southern Africa, where AIDS-related illnesses could kill 16 million more before 2020, and up to 26 percent of their agricultural labour force within two decades, said the FAO.

Often described as "new variant famine" or "HIV-induced famine," this form is radically different from traditional famines, said the book, Silent Hunger: Policy Options for Effective Responses to the Impact of HIV and AIDS on Agriculture and Food Security in the SADC Region.

"The paradox is that while the traditional drought-related famines kill dependents first (children and elderly), the HIV-related 'silent hunger' affects the most productive family members first."

The book is based on a study commissioned by the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) on the impact of HIV and AIDS in the seven most affected countries in Southern Africa: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Alex de Waal, an activist and writer, and Alan Whiteside, director of the HIV/AIDS research division at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, were the first to outline the "new variant famine" concept.

The FANRPAN book is critical of regional governments' response to the "invisible famine", which they describe as "slow" and inadequate", and presents a case for prioritising social protection.

In one of the first comprehensive studies on the impact of the pandemic on agriculture in the region, the book has uncovered some startling facts: in Botswana, the majority - 81 percent of respondents - had three or more meals per day before they contracted HIV, but after they became ill this dropped to 49 percent.

Approximately two people-years of labour have been lost by the time one person dies of AIDS, due to their weakening and the time others spend giving care, said the book, citing various studies.

James Breen, an agronomist based in Southern Africa, said, "Forty percent of the population in some of the countries in the region live with the HIV/AIDS, and at least 70 [percent] to 80 percent of the region's population depend on subsistence agriculture. At the best of times, small-scale farmers can expect subsistence, but with impact of natural disasters or, worst of all, HIV/AIDS, they have to liquidate all their assets for treatment, and they have no access to safety nets."

The authors of Silent Hunger commented: "Due to cultural and social traditions, women bear the brunt of the epidemic, both in terms of providing care for people living with HIV and AIDS as well as being at risk for HIV infection." UNAIDS has estimated that 57 percent of people living HIV and AIDS in southern Africa are women.

Of the seven countries participating in the study, four - Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia - reported that most rural households were led by women; the exceptions were Swaziland, Zambia and Lesotho.

In Swaziland, gender inequality and poverty have contributed to the HIV and AIDS epidemic. "The practice of polygamy increases the risk of women being infected. Women are also tasked with the responsibility of caring for the sick members of the household, which also increases the risk of getting infected," said De Waal and Whiteside. "When the man falls sick, it is the responsibility of the wife to provide care and take on additional duties to support the family. However, when the wife becomes sick, it is traditionally the responsibility of other women (not the husband) to provide care."

The book quoted a woman small-scale farmer in Botswana as saying, "I have not ploughed for the past five years because of taking care of AIDS children, who eventually died. So not only have I lost my children, but I have no food or seeds to start production. The sad thing is that my small [live]stock also strayed while I was running from one health provider to the next in the hope of saving my children."

In Zimbabwe, the FANRPAN study found that, traditionally, women were dispossessed of their land or assets after the deaths of their husbands, and continuation of the practice means they are left with little or no assets.

According to Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, the executive director of FANRPAN, southern Africa needs longitudinal household surveys that will track the impact of the pandemic on agriculture and food security. "We need trends analyses if we are to adequately inform policy development. Short term ad hoc studies are not giving a full picture of the pandemic’s impact".

IRIN

African agriculturalists visit Iowa farms

Northeast Iowa farmers and Iowa State University Extension staff recently joined hands with African agriculturists week to share information on how people farm in the mid western US state.

Representatives from Sasakawa Africa/Global 2000 came to Northeast Iowa for a banquet to honor Norman Borlaug, who is president of their organization.

The group toured the John and Kay Reis farm at Cresco and the Northeast Iowa Research and Demonstration Farm at Nashua. They also visited Golden Grain Energy at Mason City and saw Borlaug's boyhood farm at Protivin.

John and Kay Reis and their son Jason and his wife, Jen, raise corn, soybeans and hay and feed cattle on their farm northwest of Cresco.

John Reis said he tries to no-till as much of his farm as he can because it helps in conserving soil. It also saves trips across the field. He said that since he has no-tilled, earthworm activity has increased dramatically. "A big issue for me is to preserve the soil," he said. "There is also a cost savings with no-till, as far as the equipment you need and the time involved."

The Reis family sell corn to an ethanol plant, and they buy back DDGs (Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles) to feed to their cattle.

Tareke Berhe, who lives in Ethiopia and is regional director for rice programs for Sasakawa-Global 2000, said soil conservation is important in Africa, where soils are shallow and torrential rains can wash those soils away in a day.

"We're all about promoting improved agricultural production," said Wayne Haag, Sasakawa-Global 2000 regional director for quality protein maize in Mozambique. "We promote no-till in Africa for the conservation, but also because they do a lot of tillage by hand and much of that falls on the women. No-till reduces the labor load and the weeding burden."

Sasakawa also promotes value added ventures like livestock production and small scale processing.

"In Africa the farms are 5 to 7 acres so even if production increases, the standard of living is pretty low," Haag said. "We are looking at ways for farmers to come together in cooperatives to feed livestock, buy inputs, market crops or do some processing."

Uganda's Kayayo and Marcel Galiba, Sasakawa Africa country director in Mali, said they marveled at the productivity of Iowa farms. Africa also has good land, water and people, but government policies have prevented agriculture from thriving.

"A part is missing to make it happen, but I still have a lot of hope," Galiba said. "I have hope that one day we can make it happen, to bring our people out of poverty."

Fran Mueller, president of Self-Help International and a Waverly farmer, told the group about work Self-Help does in Ghana with Quality Protein Maize in cooperation with Sasakawa/Global 2000. Through the nutrition program school children drink a corn beverage and eat corn cakes each day.

"After two years there has been a significant increase in growth rate and disappearance of the orange hair and listlessness that come with being malnourished," Mueller said.

The mission of Sasakawa Africa-Global 2000 is to promote the scaling up of modern agricultural technologies that increase the productivity and incomes of resource-poor smallholder farmers in Africa without harming the natural resource base.

Agri News

Women overlooked in agricultural development

by Josephat Juma

A recent poll revealed that 50 percent of Kenyan men would prefer women who earn less than them, and only 35 percent of the men would prefer women who earn the same as them. Furthermore, 45 percent of the men would prefer women with the same education as men; 20 percent would be happy with less educated women; and 50 percent would prefer women who worked part time while only 39 percent would prefer women who worked full time.

These women, who ought to earn less, learn less and work on part time basis are responsible for half of the world’s food production and produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries(FAO). Women sow, weed, apply fertilizer and pesticides. Once the harvest is in, rural women provide most of the labour for post harvest activities, taking responsibility for storage, handling, processing and marketing. In the livestock sector, they feed and milk the large stock, while raising poultry and small stock such as sheep, goats, rabbits and guinea pigs. In spite of all this effort, some women interviewed in Eastern Kenya said that their husbands took the income gained, leaving them with no control over the spending.

Their contribution to secondary crops such as legumes and vegetables (important in nutrition as well as economic well being), is even greater. In Eastern Nigeria, home gardens occupy only 2 percent of a household’s farmland but account for half the farm's total production. Similarly, home gardens in Indonesia are estimated to provide more than 20 percent of household income and 40 percent of domestic food supplies.

How shall they contribute to the backbone of Africa’s economies if they earn less? If they got more income, they will exit the traditional hand-held hoe and embrace tractors. Village farming with hand-held hoes and sickles still accounts for 75 percent of Africa’s food production and an estimated 90 percent of farmers use only hand tools and human labour to work their lands. Animal draught power and tractors are used on only 8 percent and 2 percent respectively of the cultivated land. More income will ensure that they don’t walk to the market but rather buy bicycles or pick-up vans to enable them transport their produce to the market, or access farm input centres.

If they got more education, they will realize that they need to work with the profit motive in mind. Consequently, they will adopt technologies that ensure more output at little cost such as the no till methods and the use of improved seed varieties and pesticides. More education will ensure that they practice proper crop and chemical stewardship. Education will make them more informed of better markets for their products and how to add value to them. FAO (1999) reports that women have little access to the benefits of research and innovation.

In spite of their massive contribution to agriculture and food security in sub-Saharan Africa, women are continually overlooked in agricultural development. Women’s engagement in agricultural science, technology and innovation systems in Africa (only 18 percent of researchers are women) is low. Increasing their engagement, quantitatively and qualitatively, will contribute to achieving the desired transformation in the agricultural sector. Their contribution will be much greater if they have equal access to essential resources and services. In many societies, tradition and laws bar women from owning land. Without land to serve as collateral, women are cut off from access to credit. And without credit, they often cannot buy essential inputs – such as seeds, tools and fertilizer – or invest in irrigation and land improvements.

A marketplace that is free will give women more choices and remove the obstacles they face. This will yield a triple harvest – improving their lives; allowing them to put their labour, knowledge and creativity to work more productively and feeding Africa. It is not a matter of who is better-but combined effort to keep the agricultural engine running!

The African Executive

How trade distortions are harming Ghana's rice sector

Poverty is the major cause of food insecurity worldwide. It is strongly argued that trade liberalisation has the tendency to impoverish small-scale domestic food producers. Increased trade liberalisation would lead to increased cheap imports which would in turn compete out local farmers. If trade liberalisation deprives rural farmers of their livelihood then it causes food security problems as well.

In Ghana the highest incidence of poverty occurs in the agricultural sector, dominated by small holders. Statistics indicate that food crop farmers had a poverty incidence of 68% in 1991/1992 and 59% in 1998/1999 (Offei-Nkansah and Antwi-Asare, 2005).

Arguably, the influx of cheap imported food items is depriving most farmers particularly from developing countries their source of livelihood through unfair competition. The situation with rice, which constitutes a staple food for about half of the world"s population and provides a source of living to about two billion people (growers and processors) shows the seriousness of the problem.

Millions of poor rice farmers in developing countries like Ghana cannot earn a living because of cheap, often dumped rice imports. Other countries' experiences with trade liberalisation provide similar conclusions but in different sectors such as maize and soybeans.

Research commissioned by the General Agricultural Workers' Union of Ghana, shows that concern for food security is based on the fact that the large small-holder farmers are the most vulnerable and women the hardest hit. GAWU maintains that food should not be viewed only according to the free market logic. The fate of thousands of small scale farmers is too important to be neglected for the sake of trade liberalisation.

According to Tetteh Homeku and Martin Khor of the Third World Network, the swift reduction of applied tariffs has resulted in a very significant increase in imports of rice, tomatoes and poultry products, which have been heavily subsidized by the governments of the countries producing them. Their studies find that the removal of government subsidies and support have adversely affected the competitiveness of small farmers, and contributed to the unequal market situation whereby farmers have to compete with farmers and companies in developed countries that are heavily subsidized.

The study emphasizes that imports liberalisation policy in Ghana has led especially to the displacement of local rice production. Increases in imported rice have diverted consumers away from the more nutritious local brown grains to the imported milled white rice. Competition from imported rice is noted to have reduced the commercial incentive that investors might have had to upgrade the country's rice mills and improve the quality of local rice.

The United States is singled out by the study as the major source of Ghana's rice imports. In 2003 for example, the US exported 111,000 tonnes of rice to Ghana, equivalent to about one third of the Ghana rice imports in 2002.

In the US, rice production has escalated to levels beyond domestic requirements and this has led the government to implement strategies to help the industry to export. This has resulted in the growth of US rice exports by 60% in the past 20 years, reaching 3.8 million tonnes in 2003. The US policy is particularly harmful for the rice-growers of Ghana. In 2003, the US paid $1.3bn in rice subsidies to its farmers and sold the crop for $1.7bn, effectively footing the bill for 72% of the crop.

In Accra's bustling markets the effect of US imported rice is easy to see. Huge billboard adverts for Chicago Star Rice stare down on hawkers. Bags of imported rice reach to the ceiling of Charles Yeboah's long, narrow shop. He does not stock Ghanaian rice. "I can't sell it. The quality of the imported rice is so much better that even though it costs more, people buy it," he says. He adds that Ghanaian rice is only available for six months of the year.

The poor quality of some Ghanaian rice is no secret. Lack of government subsidies mean the farmers cannot afford to invest in any machinery to help with harvesting the rice.

Many people come to Accra looking for work as the dwindling rice crop has resulted in high unemployment in the north. In the middle of a windy roundabout, a stone's throw from the market, a group of women and children have made the hard concrete their home. Fusheina Alhassan says the women try to sleep in the nearby railway station. "But if it rains, we cannot sleep. Often the men come and steal our clothes and money while we sleep. Sometimes they rape us," she says.

The Statesman

South African fruit picker challenges Tesco over farm work conditions

South African fruit picker Gertruida Baartman was to confront Tesco bosses in late June about the poverty pay and terrible conditions on many of the farms supplying their stores. Last year, holding her one share supplied by anti-poverty agency ActionAid, she spoke out in the packed annual general meeting.

To a standing ovation she said that despite being afraid for her job on a Tesco-supplying farm, she was determined to campaign on behalf of the millions of women workers world-wide who toil to pick and pack the fruit that UK consumers buy.

Tesco chairman David Reid promised Gertruida that she would not be targeted for her courage and that Tesco would look into its social and environmental auditing procedures in South Africa.
Since then Gertruida has been sacked. Only the intervention of the South African Women’s Group Women on Farms and the union Sikhula Sonke ensured that she got her job back. She continues to be targeted in her personal life.

Gertruida said, "It would take me four hours to earn enough money to buy a bag of Tesco pears that sell in the UK for £1.39. And I am not alone. Across the world many thousands of women and men work in similar conditions to me for breadline wages."

Wendy Pekeur of Sikhula Sonke, who accompanied Gertruida to the UK, said, "We're not asking for a boycott. We want Tesco to stay in South Africa. We want people in the UK to continue eating South African peaches, pears and apples. We just need to persuade Tesco to respect the laws of our country. They have the power to insist on farmers giving living wages and proper housing and to pay benefits and pensions."

Jenny Ricks, ActionAid campaigner said, "Tesco's drive for low prices has caused low wages, insecure employment and dangerous working conditions for thousands of women workers like Gertruida in its supply chains overseas. It’s time for real action, not PR spin."

ActionAid’s key points are that Tesco were alerted to the issues on South African fruit farms over two years ago and made explicit promises at last year’s AGM, but women workers' lives on the farms have yet to improve. Despite launching an audit of farms, Tesco have yet to reform the buying practices that force down wages and conditions for farmer workers like Gertruida.

The situation on South African fruit farms shows that supermarkets cannot be relied upon to voluntarily clean up their act. It is time for the UK government to rein in their power and force them by regulation to stop exploiting the world’s poor through the appointment of a retail regulator - or supermarket 'Tsar' - to make the supermarkets play fair overseas.

AlertNet

Josephine Kizza shows potential of small scale intensive farming

by Michael J. Ssali

When we arrived at St. Jude Family Projects at Busense, Kabonera sub-county, in Masaka District on June 2, 2007, the proprietor, Ms. Josephine Kizza, had just returned from Brazil where she had spent almost a month addressing farmers and carrying out demonstrations in different parts of that country about organic farming. She was resting after the long journey and it was Mr. Juma Byarugaba, one of about 20 twenty farm hands who conducted us around the farm.

President Museveni has visited the famous 3.7 acre small-scale farm a number of times and has often publicly said that Kizza earns a minimum of 50 million Shillings ($31,000) from the farm every month. In March he took his entire cabinet to the farm. The president believes that other small-scale farmers have a lot to learn from Kizza.

The farm has since the 90s been the destination of farmers seeking to improve their livelihood out of small-scale farming. It is also the place to go to learn about environmental protection, rain water harvesting, fruit drying, organic farming, bee keeping, bark yard farming, irrigation, soil conservation, fish farming, and a whole range of other farming activities.

Today, it doubles as a farm and a training institution. Farmers or extension workers who choose to spend a few days or weeks at the farm learning about particular farming skills are provided with accommodation and meals at the farm at a fee. Short time visitors that want to be taken around the various projects at the farm are each charged Shs5,000 ($3). Donor agencies and NGOs keep taking groups of farmers and students from as far as Tanzania and Kenya to the farm to learn about organic farming.

St. Jude Family Projects are comprised of 17 different money-generating projects, all on 3.7 acres of land. The projects are divided into two categories, animal husbandry and crop husbandry. "But the most valuable commodity on this farm are the animals' and birds' droppings," Byarugaba said. "It is from the droppings that we get the biogas, which we use to cook; it is the droppings we use to feed our fish, to make compost manure, and to fertilise the soil for effective crop growing."

The farm puts nothing to waste. The slurry from the biogas tank is directed into trenches that lead it to the various crop gardens on the farm, where it serves as manure. Cow dung not only serves as a source of biogas or manure, but it may also be used to feed chicken. Yet chicken droppings when treated may be used to feed cattle. Cow's urine is very good manure but it may also be turned into a natural pesticide. Cassava flour can be used to improvise for cement when the farmer wants to construct a simple house to store such items as seeds or small-scale farm implements.

Rainwater from the compound is collected and stored in a huge underground tank cheaply made out of polythene. The farmer may use the water to irrigate his crops or to feed his animals during the dry season. There are demonstrations on drip irrigation and the preparation of 'plant tea' and liquid manure, the latter two both for irrigation and soil enrichment.

There are six exotic cows and about as many calves under zero grazing on the farm. There are exotic dairy goats and pigs and both local and exotic chicken. Farmers in the neighbourhood are encouraged to bring their local animals to the farm to mate with the exotic breeds.

The pigs on the farm tend to grow to monstrous sizes and some are said to weigh as much as 200 kilogrammes. The animals' droppings are used to make composite manure for the crops.

There is a nursery for grafted fruit tree cuttings. One can get fast growing fruit trees such as mangoes, oranges, lemons, avocado, and passion fruit creepers.

The farm is planned in such a way that almost any tree or plant growing on it has a bearing to farming. The trees are either soil enriching or fodder for animals. There are such trees as calliandra calothyrsus, grevillea robusta and grasses such as elephant grass, Guatemala, Tanzania and lab, lab. Mangoes and mutuba trees are also grown, as their leaves are good fodder for goats, apart from providing shade.

Trees such as neem are useful for repelling mosquitoes and other harmful insects. The trees and grasses are mostly planted along soil erosion control bunds and water conduction trenches. By continuously growing the trees, the farmer is never without wood for fuel.

Visitors also learn about fuel-saving stoves and fireplaces. "All people who own cows have no excuse not to use biogas," said our guide, Byarugaba. On our way to the fishpond in the valley, we saw about 20 beehives from which the farmer harvests honey for export at about Shs9,000 ($5.50) per kilo.

In the pond, Kizza rears fish known in Luganda as 'male.' How large they grow depends on how long she keeps them in the pond. Recently, Byarugaba said, it was decided that harvesting takes place after eight months. The buyers of her fish are large hotels and restaurants in Kampala at Shs1,500 (US 90 cents) per kilo. Cow dung, maize flour and rotting vegetables are good food for fish in the pond.

And how does she fight snakes and birds that prey on fish? Boiled eggs are placed along the pond's boundaries and when a snake swallows the egg, it cannot digest it and so it dies. Polythene sheets, which most snakes are known to abhor, are also placed around the pond. Scarecrows such as damaged tapes are tied across the pond and they frighten birds as the wind blows, shaking the tapes and causing a peculiar sound.

At the fruit drying section, one will learn about the difference between selling fresh jackfruit locally at Shs1,500 and drying it and exporting it to earn as much as Shs40,000 ($25) per kilo. The farm exports dried sweet bananas, gonja, pineapples, jackfruit, tomatoes and mangoes to Europe.

So how did the two former school teachers, Kizza and her late husband Aliddeki Kizza, who had no prior training in agriculture at all, rise up to this level of farming? "Well, we were interested," she said, standing in the compound in front of her beautiful grey-roofed mansion. She was an infant class teacher husband, who held a diploma in education, was a secondary school teacher of commerce and accounts.

They once grew a large field of cassava but after failing to get a buyer for the crop, they decided to rear two pigs to consume the cassava. "From then onwards, we would attend farmers' seminars and visit other farmers, copying what we deemed best for us. Later, we went into cattle zero grazing, resigned from teaching, and became full time farmers."

With time, they noticed they were attracting several visitors who wanted to learn from them. So it made sense to charge a fee to compensate for the time they spent taking the visitors around the different projects on the farm.

In the early 90s, an English visitor to the farm helped Kizza take up a year's training in Britain in organic farming. A few years later, her husband did a similar course in Denmark. And now what they built is something other farmers can learn from.

The Monitor

Pump-flood irrigation enables Senegalese women to combine rice and fish farming

Outside the town of Ndioum, on the banks of the Senegal River near the Mauritanian border, six women's groups have learned a new way of combining rice and tilapia growing that is reversing the effects of overfishing and pollution.

Rice fields must be flooded constantly until the grains can be harvested. Previously the women had to carry water from the river to the fields in jugs to keep the rice sufficiently watered. But now, with a pump provided by U.S.-based Counterpart International that more easily brings river water to the fields, the women have a unique way to use water in the fields to combine the growing of rice and the growing of tilapia, a nutrient- and protein-rich fish that is a favorite of people in northern Senegal.

The fish need approximately the same amount of time as the rice to mature. When the rice is ready to be harvested and the water must be drained, so too are the mature tilapia ready to be caught and sold.

The women are able to raise and sell hundreds of pounds of fresh fish each harvest season, improving the diets of their families and communities. In addition, the women fence off a corner section of each field for compost production. The use of organic fertilizer reduces the need for polluting pesticides. The blended compost-rice-tilapia fields can be a model for other villages, said Kudi Ba, Counterpart's agriculture program manager.

"The first harvest will be for our families, but then we can sell to other villages," said Houleye, a leader of one of the women's groups. "I hope to buy medicine for my family with the profit," said another woman. The women noted that another goal is to sell enough fish and rice to pay for gas
to power the pump.

Innovations

"Women farmers have to be ten times better than men"

Many female subsistence farmers in South Africa encounter difficulties gaining access to markets, securing bank loans and retaining reliable workers to assist them.

These concerns were addressed recently at the 4th World Congress of Rural Women, held in the South African coastal city of Durban in late April, an event that attracted more than 2,000 farmers.

Much remains to be done, says Martha Moside, coordinator for the Women in Agriculture and Rural Development Association, a government-backed initiative. "Women have problems accessing the market. We have small plots - mine is just two and a half hectares. As a result, the supermarkets are not willing to accommodate us because of the small quantities that we supply. We try to team up with other women, but it's difficult : we don't know each other. You need to develop trust before you engage in such an activity," she said.

Moside said the solution could lie in the informal market, for example with vegetable and fruit vendors. "But they, too, are unreliable. There is no guarantee that they will come back to you. They may come once or twice but if they get someone with cheaper products they abandon you," she said.

Asked if women were able to secure bank loans, Moside replied, "It's the biggest headache. The banks need to know how you are managing your account, demanding a six month statement. Sometimes they come and check your property. In spite of all these troubles, the money doesn't come immediately. The Land Bank, for example, takes about six months to process an application. The conventional banks can reject it outright. In rural areas, communal land is still distributed by chiefs. This means that it will be difficult for a woman to get a loan because the land doesn't belong to her."

She suggested that improved access to credit could be through a special funded supported by government and well wishers. "It's difficult for a woman to get access to finance as well as get the right staff and keep them. As a woman, you have to work nine to ten times harder than a male farmer."

Moside said labourers believe that it is better to work for a man "because he has authority. To change this perception you need education, but you also have to try harder to keep the workers."

On learning new business and farming techniques, Moside said, "We get training through the department of agriculture, who teach you how to keep your books, how to grow vegetables and run poultry. The Agriculture Research Council and the Department of Agriculture have a monthly newspaper but it only comes in English. We still have along way to go."

IPS

How HIV/AIDS is changing farming gender roles in Swaziland

Swaziland recently announced a 'Woman Farmer of the Year' competition, acknowledging the contribution of women to the nation's food production. Until 2006, women were regarded as minors in terms of the law, unable to own property or open a bank account without the permission of a male relative or husband.

But the world's highest HIV/AIDS infection rate has left many farms in the hands of women. "More and more, women are taking over the running of family farms. Society is realising that women are out in the fields as much as in the kitchen, but they need training and support," said Sempiwe Dlamini, an extension officer for the ministry of agriculture.

The southern Shiselweni region, where Dlamini works, has been hit hard by drought and HIV/AIDS. Most farm-owners are either widows whose husbands had previously planted, weeded and harvested, or children who have lost their parents to AIDS. About a third of all adults in Swaziland are infected with HIV. "The country's new farmers are able-bodied women in their twenties through fifties, though some may be teenagers, and some even older," said Dlamini, who has worked with subsistence farmers for years. She said it was unfortunate that the patriarchal Swazi traditions kept women away from the fields, which were considered the province of men. "They were only a few metres away, cooking and cleaning, but they never learned to farm," she said.

"A woman's hand on the plough was considered bad luck," said Nelsiwe Nhlabatsi, 25, a primary school teacher. "Now many of the children in my class have their school fees paid by women who plough the land." One such woman is Thabsile Hlope, 36, of Mliba village, 30km north of commericial centre Manzini. She was forced to manage the farm when her husband died of a "wasting illness" in 2006. "He was never tested for HIV, so you cannot say he died of AIDS," she said.

Though her farm is small, there were many neighbours who would have gladly incorporated it into their own holdings. About 80 percent of Swazis reside on communal Swazi Nation Land, where permission to work an agricultural plot, and the possibility of passing this on to their children, depends on their ability to keep land granted to them by area chiefs. "One of the dangers of parents dying of AIDS is that their children are robbed of their heritage. The farms may be taken over by relatives, or the community elders give the fields to other adults : the children grow up to inherit nothing," said Doo Apane, an attorney and advocate for women's rights.

The Swaziland branch of Women in Law for Southern Africa has been advocating for the customary mourning period for women to be revisited. By tradition, widows must retire from public view and productive work for up to two years after the death of their husbands. With AIDS deaths mounting, the mourning period prohibits widows from returning to work in town or farms to support their families.

Hlope's maize crop, like many others, has failed mainly because of the drought, but she could also do with some training in farming. "My 14-year-old son worked the plough with my husband - he planted the seedsin the ground. I know how to weed from my garden; I raise tomato and cabbage there. The whole family used to help with the harvest," she said. But the use of fertiliser and hybrid seeds, crop rotation and alternative drought-tolerant crops, are new to her.

The Woman Farmer of the Year can win cash prizes as well as farming implements, and comes with an instruction course for women. "This type of tutoring is essential for all women farmers, coupled with donated implements," said Dlamini.

Wilma Maziya, a widow and subsistence farmer in the eastern Lubombo region, said the authorities should provide them with access to markets for their surplus production, with additional support for ventures into commercial farming. Maziya beat the region's usual lack of rainfall by planting sorghum next to her maize this year. There is a dramatic difference between the section of her field that is brown with withered maize stalks and the row upon row of green and upright sorghum plants, each topped with a large inverted cone of brown grain. "We will cook the sorghum or trade it with neighbours. But where can I sell it? There are no markets here," she said. She has never been visited by a representative of the National Agricultural Marketing Board, which was set up to encourage farmers to raise their standard of living by growing cash crops, and helps by trucking their crops to central wholesalers. "If I could sell my surplus sorghum, I would grow more," Maziya said.

Agriculture Ministry workers like Dlamini are encouraged that women farmers like Maziya have the experience, capacity and willingness to do more to increase national food production. "Swaziland used to be self-sufficient in food," she said. "I have no doubt that if the women are given the assistance they need - because the nation needs them now more than ever - we will go a long way to making the most of our national potential."

IRIN