[Agro-ecology is regarded
as a "science, practice and movement" supporting socially and
environmentally sustainable food production. In terms of practice, it is most
identified with rejecting monoculture and heavy machinery, and instead
growing a wide variety of foods -- including plants, trees and livestock
-- with relatively simple hand tools, which require no fossil fuel to operate
or great expense to the farmer.]
Few areas of the world live up to this year's International
Women's Day theme to "Make it Happen" as well as the isolated
villages of eastern Africa -- where most women grow, process and cook
food, often as the sole head of the family.
This may surprise people
who think of the women's rights movement as an urban trend based in the more
affluent and liberal Global North. But the fact is that rural African
women, who shoulder most of the work in all stages of a food system -- seed
selection, farming, processing, selling, meal preparation and composting --
are fashioning a food system based on principles of what's called
"agro-ecology."
Agro-ecology is regarded
as a "science, practice and movement" supporting socially and
environmentally sustainable food production. In terms of practice, it is most
identified with rejecting monoculture and heavy machinery, and instead
growing a wide variety of foods -- including plants, trees and livestock
-- with relatively simple hand tools, which require no fossil fuel to operate
or great expense to the farmer.
Agro-ecology is not only
better suited to empower women than the heavily-mechanized and industrial model
of food production, which is standard throughout the Global North. Agro-ecology
is also well-suited to both preventing more intensive climate chaos by reducing
emissions of global warming gases, as well as adapting to the negative results
expected from global warming, such as drought, and hurricane force storms, that
most experts predict will define Africa's future weather. African women
till the fields to make both empowerment and climate stabilization
agendas happen at the same time.
The late Wangari Maathai,
from Kenya, is the best-known Eastern African woman to link the objectives of
women's rights and environmental protection. In 2004, she received the Nobel
Prize for her tree-planting campaigns that advanced peace, democracy and
the environment.
Today, her work is
carried on by women farmers who practice agro-forestry and agro-ecology,
farming methods that make generous use of trees to provide a variety of
benefits.
Women lead from
grassroots
About 70 per cent of
Africa's population, 65 per cent of the workforce, make their living on farms.
Women do most of the work of subsistence production, especially on the small
farms where 70 per cent of the food Africans eat is produced, on less than 15
per cent of the farmland available -- the rest is controlled by plantations
that produce food for export.
Women do most of the
heavy lifting in agriculture, especially when it comes to hauling wood
and water or carrying goods over country roads to markets. A World Bank study
in 2009 estimated that women transport 26 metric tonne-kilometers a year,
mostly on their heads while walking, compared to men, who carry less than seven
metric-tonne kilometers.
Women do most of the work
to produce food for the family, including seed saving, hand-hoeing, planting,
weeding, harvesting, marketing and food preparation, says Jennifer Muldoon, a
Canadian now living in Toronto who taught tree-planting and grafting for food
production at farm co-ops in Uganda and Kenya during the period from 2007
to 2010. She worked with these co-ops on behalf of the Canadian Cooperative
Association, Uganda Cooperative Alliance and Swedish-based Vi Agroforestry.
Muldoon worked frequently
with women, partly because women were typically responsible for most of the
tasks of subsistence agriculture, and partly because some of their husbands had
been killed or murdered during the prolonged war between the Ugandan army and
Lords Resistance Army rebels. She worked with women on their farms, and also on
leadership teams of each co-op.
Innovative methods yield
nourishing results
The women farmers grew
several kinds of trees for several kinds of reasons. Faidherbia trees, a
species of acacia sometimes referred to as fertilizer trees or "fertilizer
factories," were grown because they drew down nitrogen from the air,
providing free fertilizer to exhausted soils, often on land that had been in
the midst of conflict zones only months before Muldoon arrived. Leaves and
seeds from this tree also provided food for livestock, while protecting the
soil from erosion caused by stiff winds and heavy rains.
She also taught how to
graft tasty mangoes onto hardy but less flavorful mango root systems,
producing a fruit that could be enjoyed by the family and sold at the farmers
market. Women who became skilled at grafting sometimes set up nurseries where
they sold grafted mango plants at a good margin. Pine were grown for charcoal
and firewood, and eucalyptus were grown for construction timber, either
at home or in the marketplace.
Whatever the farmer's
reason for growing trees, the atmosphere of the planet wins, because
trees store carbon in their roots, trunk and branches and preserve carbon
stored in the nearby soil from erosion. As a result, farming can be a human activity
that actually reduces global warming emissions to the atmosphere.
At the same time -- a
plus that is unique to food production -- trees can protect vegetable and grain
crops from the stormy weather likely to become commonplace as global warming scenarios
unfold. Trees provide shade for animals and plants and also draw up water from
deep below, thereby shielding nearby plants from the scorching sun and parched
air during prolonged dry seasons, for example.
By planting trees,
agro-ecology and agro-forestry honor the ancient subsistence landholder
tradition of producing food, fodder, fuel, fabric and medicine on
self-sufficient farms, wherein each plant contributes to a whole greater than
the sum of the parts.
Gender equity, human
health and sustainable climate inextricably linked
But to modernize this
tradition, agro-ecology methods enable women to diversify their food supply for
their families, and to empower themselves by selling cash crops and surplus in
nearby markets, and gaining their own spending money.
A 2012 manual on gender
and climate change, produced by the United Nations Development Program produced
a 2012 manual on gender and climate change notes that women made up the
majority of community leaders, accounting for 58 per cent of extension
workers, 75 per cent of nutrition and health workers, and 71 per cent of
executive committee members.
"Women also wanted
to learn to run a business," and become financially independent, Muldoon
says, and the co-op bank was pleased to lend them start-up money "because
women had such a high rate of repaying debts."
Such initiative and
leadership are rarely rewarded by laws and practices promoting gender equality.
But the results could be dramatic, according to a well-documented publication
From the roots up: How agro-ecology can feed Africa, which was released
last month by the British charity, Global Justice Now. On-farm
output could increase by 20 to 30 per cent, it's estimated, and the number of
hungry people could be reduced by as much as 17 per cent. Add in climate
protection, and the link between equity, human and environmental health is full
of promise.
