Farmers Fighting Poverty: women cooperating for better living conditions
NBvP, Vrouwen van Nu (Dutch Rural Women Organisation) has years of experience with groups of rural women in Benin and shortly also in Belarus. With Agriterra we work together in projects to cooperate with women to improve their rural circumstances and to empower women and strengthening their women’s organisation.
The working formula ‘farmers meeting farmers’ works. It has proved to be successful (see: http://www.agriterra.org/en/press/57021/dutch-prime-minister-supports-farmers-fighting-poverty). Farmers do not need many words to understand each other. And I dare say this is especially true for women. More so when women share a rural and agricultural background. A connection is made very rapidly, easily and effectively. It seems to us that it is rooted in women’s genes to want to improve her own life and that of her dear ones. Women all over the world connect on these issues of health, care and development. And for those and more reasons it is proven that rural and social development is more effective if you start with developing women and organisations of women.
Women need more than this bond and this knowledge that connects us. Women simply do not have the same opportunities, possibilities and conditions as men. Not in the Netherlands, and certainly not in countries as Benin and Belarus. That is why farmers fighting poverty is essential. We need to find each other in projects and help organizations like Agriterra to help us setting up these projects and coordinate them. In these projects we can stimulate women to strengthen their organisation, to educate women to strengthen themselves, to be more confident and also help to fight the barriers that put them behind.
We stimulate women to take part in decision making processes. In Benin we did a project with local authorities where men and women experienced how effectively men and women can cooperate together. Also in Benin women can now start their own small business because we enable them to get finances via a micro-financing system set up in their own women organisation. Fifteen years ago in Benin and two years ago in Belarus, the first rural women organisations were founded and they are still progressing with our support.
Farmers fighting poverty enables farmers to meet farmers, women meet women and share their hopes and experiences. These equal contacts and interactions are very hopeful and powerful. The non-interference of professional trainers or experts in these small, local learning processes is a pre in many cases, because people connect truly on an equal basis. Let’s simply continue this.
Conny Voordendag
Managing director of NBvP, Vrouwen van Nu
Farmers are key to fighting poverty
It's strange that we give so little thought to farmers, yet our very survival depends on them. Is this because in the developed world we only spend about 10- to 20 per cent of our monthly income on food? Maybe. I believe urban people have simply lost their conscious connection with the food chain’s starting point. Otherwise, food production and worldwide food problems would receive more attention in the media.
Small farmers in developing countries play a crucial role in local food supply. But they've been overlooked by policymakers for the past 25 years. Many have been forced to stop producing, or fall back on self-sufficiency. Three-quarters of the people who suffer from hunger and malnutrition live in rural areas, and that's where the fight against poverty and hunger must start.
This fight needs to involve small farmers and their organizations. Farmers establish new enterprises that create employment opportunities for their children. Rural democracy, economic growth and income distribution benefit from their determined action. Heads of state and large multi-lateral donors agree. Since early last year, we've see them pledge billions of dollars at every summit meeting on agricultural development in the developing world. But very little of this funding has trickled down to the farm level.
Farmers' organizations operate on the principle of democracy, with real farmers feeding their views into local associations, provincial, national, regional and even worldwide federations. As such, farmers' organizations are powerful machines to disseminate new ideas, new technologies and knowledge over vast areas. They reach the people who live on less than two dollars a day, and are themselves a form of social media, transmitting the voice of the poor to others.
To help, in some OECD countries agri-agencies are established, such as UPA-DI in Canada and Agriterrain the Netherlands. These are development cooperation organizations, with a mandate to promote farmer-to-farmer co-operation, through project ideas generated by farmers and cooperative organizations in developing countries. These agri-agencies have joined forces in AgriCord to better coordinate their work, and in 2007, they came together to implement a program called Farmers Fighting Poverty. It supports activities by 145 farmers' organizations in 59 countries, such as cultivation-technical aspects, starting cooperatives, setting up agricultural extension and training in lobby and advocacy.
The Farmers Fighting Poverty petition simply asks heads of state to agree that 0.2% of the billions of dollars pledged for aid should be dedicated to support farmers' organizations in the developing world. It is paramount that these organizations become stronger to better serve their members and be enabled to deliver their contribution in the fight against hunger and poverty. The G8's US$20 billion investment in agriculture worldwide can only pay off with the direct involvement of farmers and their organizations.
If you support this position, please visit the Youtube wakeup call video, sign the petition and send the link to those who also believe farmers fight poverty.
José van Gelder
Agriterra, the Netherlands