WUNRN
NEW ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SECURITY &
NUTRITION - WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR WOMEN SMALLHOLDER FARMERS AS IN AFRICA?
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READ BETWEEN THE LINES - THE COVERT
VS. THE OVERT....NEW ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SECURITY & NUTRITION - Globalized
Agriculture, Corporatized Aid, Deals Non-Transparent with Profits, Ownership,
& Control by Powers Involved - If women comprise some 80% of Africa's
Smallholder Farmers, why are they not "at the table" for making such
agreements, and benefiting by specific gender language in Alliance policy
decisions? In an age of increasing economic inequalities, and of
instabilities of smallholder/family farms, reeling from conflict and
displacement, natural disasters, climate change, and more, corporate power and
profit in agriculture, channeled through governments, becomes another dimension
of small women farmers' defense against marginalization, poverty and hunger,
thus undermining small women farmers' food security, food sovereignty, food
sustainability.
AND 2014 is the International Year
of Family Farming
The United Nations declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) to recognize the importance of family farming in reducing poverty and improving global food security.
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https://geneva.usmission.gov/2014/05/22/alliance-generates-investments-in-africas-agriculture/
Washington - 21 May 2014 - A growing global alliance devoted to improving food security and nutrition now covers 10 African countries, includes more than 160 companies and has generated more than $7 billion in planned investments, according to a new U.S. report on accelerated progress to end global hunger.
The 2014 Feed the Future Progress Report, released May 19 in Washington, says that organizations supported by the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition are showing results.
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Women In and Beyond the Global
WOMEN ARE MAJORITY OF
AFRICA'S SUBSISTENCE FARMERS, BUT THE NEW ALLIANCE FOR FOOD
SECURITY & NUTRITION CONTINUES
THE POWER, PROFIT, OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR & GOVERNMENTS
By Dan Moshenberg - February 18,
2014
In 2012, the G8 launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which, controversially, gave agribusiness a seat at the African farming table, right next to governments and aid donors. Agribusiness had always been there, but now the arrangements of hand holding and pocket filling would be formalized. Despite promises of the `new’, transparency around the arrangements did not increase. If anything, the world of African food security and nutrition transactions became murkier.
The Guardian UK ran a series of articles on the New Alliance. Many
see the Alliance as colonialism with a neoliberal face. First,
the aid processes become increasingly privatized and imbedded into the workings,
and failings, of markets. Second, the contractual and policy decisions are not
only made behind closed doors, they’re made in settings that prohibit any
direct involvement of smallholder farmers. Neither the Alliance nor The
Guardian seems to care that smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are overwhelmingly women.
What’s not new here? Millions of women workers rendered invisible … again.
Ten African countries signed agreements that `open’ them to greater foreign direct investment. The countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania. The national commitments involve land and water; seeds; tax; finance; infrastructure; food security or nutrition; and other. Ten countries signed 209 commitments. Of those ten countries, only Benin made any commitments to women, and those two commitments are, at best, vague: “Design and set up a gender-based information and communication system to prompt behavioural change in the agricultural and rural sector.” “Improve how gender is addressed when designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating projects/programmes and activities in the agricultural sector.” As of yet, the progress on these is listed as “Unknown.”
The Guardian reported on Malawian smallholder farmers being kept in the dark on Malawi’s commitments; on Tanzanian smallholder farmers’ concerns that the new alliance will only turn them into cheap labor for the new, large farming corporations; and on Ghanaian smallholder farmers’ mixed reactions. The Guardian doesn’t mention or quote any women smallholder farmers.
Women comprise as much as 80% of African subsistence farmers. In Burkina Faso, gardeners and smallholder farmers are overwhelmingly women. From palm oil production in Benin to cocoa production in Ghana to general smallholder production in Tanzania, women predominate in numbers but not in access to resources or control. In Malawi, women make up almost 70% of the full time farmer population. Every major multinational agency has issued a report on the centrality of women in agriculture to any food security agenda. Repeatedly, reports demonstrate that women constitute the majority of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, and yet have little to no access to land tenure or to State or international assistance. Those reports also suggest that extension services automatically look to men as `change agents.’
Women farmers are a majority of the adult farming population. They are not part of the picture. They are the picture. They are not part of the story. They are the story. When you see the picture, when you read the story, if you don’t see and read about women farmers, write to the authors and tell them, “No women farmers, no justice.”
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Direct
Link to Full 17-Page 2013 Document: http://landportal.info/sites/default/files/african_agricultural_growth_corridors_new_alliance_-_econexus_june_2013.pdf - Type size
larger for easier reading.
Impacts on women particularly
problematic
Although they are the majority of African farmers, women are often worst affected by ‘modernisation’ of agriculture because in many societies they still have limited rights to land and may well lose those should they be widowed. They often face discrimination under both customary practice and law, as well as gender-based violence.Women often have the task of gathering fuel, fodder, medicine, water and food and may rely more on access to common land for this purpose, as well as for additional resources to sell to pay for their children to go to school, for example. This means they will be more adversely affected by the loss of common resources that frequently occurs with the shift to contract farming for industry.
AFRICAN AGRICULTURAL GROWTH CORRIDORS & THE NEW ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SECURITY & NUTRITION
WHO BENEFITS, WHO LOSES?
Helena Paul and Ricarda Steinbrecher
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