Lil Break!

I'm going to be taking a little break from blogging the next week and halfish... finals! Papers! Packing! Saying goodbye to friends I won't see for 6 months! It's madness. But I can't tell you how excited I am for the next year... first I'll be at Farm and Wilderness again for the summer, and then... AUSTRALIA! So many adventures ahead of me!

Signs of Spring!

Greenery

Blue skies

And sidewalk chalk!

Ginkgo

Policy Brief Three: Women in Agriculture in Developing Countries

Land Acquisition for Women as a Barrier to Agriculture

Land rights have always been a source of conflict. Today the land grab is not between countries, but between individuals in rural communities. Women have long been denied the right to own land. While land rights have been rectified in most core states, periphery nations have to contend with societal norms and legacies of patrilinear passage of land among generations. In order for women to receive the full benefits of their agricultural work, they need to have security in land ownership.

Post-colonial land reform has often left women out of the equation, or vested land rights in the remains of colonial systems, which tends not to favor the native people of the country in question. In post-colonial India, very little redistribution was done. “When we look back after 58 years of independence only 1.8% of surplus land has been distributed to the landless and most of this land has been given in the name of men.” (ICARRD, 9). Much of the land was given or sold to multinational corporations. Women also have to overcome higher percentages of illiteracy and often uninformed about banking systems.

There are three sources of land for women: transfer of land from the government, from the market, or through family inheritance (ICARRD, 2). 87% of land is privately owned, so land is most often gained through inheritance. (ICARRD, 2). Land cannot just be viewed in terms of the economic value of property; “land is a source of security to produce food for sustenance” (ICARRD, 2).

ICARRD (International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development) outlines seven demands from government to improve land rights for women (ICARRD, 3). The government should give rural families 2-5 acres of land under the women’s name by giving them surplus land. This is especially important for marginalized groups. The government should give “security of tenure” to people, with no forced evictions. This would make it possible for women farmers to be guaranteed a permanent livelihood without having to worry about losing their productive agricultural land. Another key demand is an increase in women’s share of inheritance and property. Currently the system is highly patrilinear in most provinces of India. ICARRD is calling for “Gender-Just Agrarian Reform.” (ICARRD, 3).

Cherryl Walker outlines a similar situation in Southern and Eastern Africa. This region has also had to recover form colonial rule. The land dispensation in the wake of colonialism has formed a land-owning system with high racial disparity, with only 2% of private, commercial farmland in South Africa under black ownership (Walker, 14). However, when women manage to get land, they have been more successful than their male neighbors, with more land under cultivation and higher yields (Walker, 15).

Threats to women holding land are widowhood, war and conflict, and increased pressures from HIV/AIDS. In most societies in Africa, when women are widowed, they are at the mercy of their husband’s family. Traditionally, they are taken care of, but cases arise in which the land they had farmed is redistributed back to the husband’s family. War and conflict in many African nations has changed the ownership of land and made weak governments that are unable to settle land disputes or vouch for previous ownership. In terms of labor, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has had a vast impact of food and crop production. The adult rate is as high as 36% in Botswana, with females affected more overall than males (Walker, 27). Walker also notes that “the likelihood of AIDS exacerbating already observed trends towards increased landlessness on the one hand and accumulation of land in the hands of the wealthier members of society on the other is considerable” (Walker, 33).

One way that the experience in Africa is different from India is that it is hard to generalize about women’s rights, as different societies have different lineage rights to property. Some are patrilineal and some are matrilineal. However, “these advantages are coming under pressure from the spread of patrilineal norms and practices” (Walker, 16).

Walker gives specific suggestions for future research, including comparative studies on land use to understand the gendered interests of land strategies, research on local solutions, and monitoring of government land and urban land policies. (Walker, 68-69). Walker’s policy recommendations include “Constitutional commitment to gender equity”, development of indicators to measure progress on land rights for women, changing “personal, family and customary law, including provisions on inheritance, which discriminate against women, as well as the review and repeal of any other legislation that prevents women from owning land or entering into contracts in their own right.” (Walker 69-70). Many of Walker’s recommendations are more developmental, such as increasing AIDS awareness, building infrastructure and increasing rural development, and increasing women’s influence in local and national governments. Her final recommendation is to address unequal trade for African agriculture and industry at the “macroeconomic and global level.” (Walker, 70).

Judy Adoko disagrees with Walker and ICARRD. She believes that educating women about their rights may not be enough. While customary law for some tribes in Uganda give women more rights than the state, customary law isn’t always being applied. In fact, Adoko argues that “customary authorities” or clan leader don’t know their own unwritten laws anymore, and customary laws are being lost to their cultures. The state is increasingly ignoring the clan system. Because of their diminished powers, clan leaders themselves are no longer clear about their powers and have become victims of land grabbing. The government and NGOs have inherited colonial prejudices against native and traditional culture, and even if they did respect these pre-existing legal systems, do not have the legal infrastructure to absorb them.

Adoko claims that women’s land rights will not improve until the government and NGOs change their conceptions of customary law, the government becomes more “proactive” about addressing the problems, and policy is based on reality instead of colonial prejudices (Adoko).

I think that there is going to need to be an integrated approach to increasing women’s land rights. While the agricultural success of women depends heavily on having land to use, women need a guarantee that they will have sustained access to it independent of their husband or the government. The approach to land rights is dependent on the country, as each nation has different things to contend with. Colonial history and native and indigenous attitudes will shape the land use situation in each individual country, and a one-size-fits-all solution will not work. I think that strong countries need to include a constitutional right for women to hold land in their governance, while countries with weak governments should focus on local solutions. I feel that supporting the cultures with matrilinear lines of succession will help to curb the increase in patriarchical values. If we preserve them from being affected by the spread of patriarchical values, we won’t have to redo the work of generations in those specific cultures. As women gain land rights, it will create a precedent for them to receive other rights that their male land-owning counterparts receive.

Works Cited

Adoko, Judy, and Simon Levine. "IATP | Trade Observatory | Headlines." Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy | Where Global and Local Meet Sustainability. The Guardian, 26 Mar. 2009. Web. 25 Apr. 2011. .

"A Case Study on Implementing Land Rights for Women in India." ICARRD, Feb. 2006. Web. 26 Apr. 2011. .

Walker, Cherryl. "Land Reform in Southern and Eastern Africa: Key Issues for Strengthening Women's Access to and Rights in Land." World Bank, Mar. 2002. Web. 25 Apr. 2011. .

In This World

In This World

The hill pasture, and open place among the trees,

tilts in the valley. The clovers and tall grasses

are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill

dark floodwater moves down the river.

The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing.

I have climbed up to water the horses

and now sit and rest, high on the hillside

letting the day gather and pass. Below me

cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands,

slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world

men are making plans, wearing themselves out,

spending their lives, in order to kill each other.

-Wendell Berry

Policy Brief Two: Food Problems in a Developing Country: Bolivia

Pro-Poor Development in Bolivia

Bolivia is one of the poorest counties in Latin America. While poverty affects two-thirds of the country’s population, the rural (and mostly indigenous) people live with a poverty rate of about 80 percent (WFP). The World Food Program has focused its efforts on education and fighting child malnutrition. While these are important steps in the development of the next generation of healthy Bolivians, it does necessarily help the indigenous population in the most remote areas of the country. These programs ask the indigenous people to change many aspects of the life they have been leading for centuries. However, many researchers have been looking into other options to supplement food aid and development assistance in Bolivia and surrounding countries. Collective action and outside agents working directly with communities, both of which have been referred to as “pro-poor” developments, hold the most promise to allow rural peoples to continue their subsistence agriculture while rising above the poverty threshold.

The FAO has started a Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative (PPLPI) to look into livestock improvements in less developed counties and make policy suggestions. In the PPLPI’s report on Bolivia, they cite the Bolivian weak government as a source of instability and a roadblock for regulation. However, they also suggest that the government could serve two vital roles. The first is to regulate animal health and sanitation, such as monitoring for Food and Mouth Disease (PPLPI, 1). The second is to regulate and monitor slaughterhouse conditions to ensure food safety. These improvements would benefit Bolivians participating in the livestock sector overall, but in order to benefit the rural poor, the PPLPI says small producers and associations need to become more experienced at making political change (PPLPI, 1).

The PPLPI identified four key areas to focus on to ensure the rural population can benefit from expansion of livestock production. The first is strengthening the small producers’ associations, which are “relatively young, weak, and inexperienced at political lobbying” (PPLPI, 1). Second is strengthening the municipal governments so that they have the clout and authority to carry out regulation and to decentralize authority and the change-making capacity of rural areas. Third is institutional reforms; creating a “stable, merit-based bureaucracy” rather than one based on patronage (PPLPI, 2). Finally, the National Service for Agricultural and Livestock Sanitation (SENASAG) needs to redirect its attention to camelid herders in rural areas rather than cattle elsewhere. This means shifting energy to poorer areas rather than working strictly with the “large, wealthy ranchers” (PPLPI, 2).

All these suggestions are important things for Bolivia to tackle. However, it depends heavily on political and governmental change, which the PPLPI itself admits is unstable. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has produced two reports who’s authors suggest the rural poor can help themselves with the help of their communities, NGOs, and an influx of resources to get them on their way.

Mario Monge, Frank Hartwich, and Daniel Halgin put forward the report “How Change Agents and Social Capital Influence the Adoption of Innovations among Small Farmer,” in which they write that farming communities in Bolivia are tight-knit. Monge et al. think that farmers could best adopt new knowledge and technology best through their interactions with one another. They also suggest that collective action can be an effective tool for coping with all the uncertainties of agriculture. Collective action can help in “risk-sharing” and with the “food insecurity, environmental, and price risks associated with innovations” (Monge et al, 8). While one farmer cannot necessarily afford new machinery and technology, a group of farmers might be able to.

In another IFPRI report, Andre Devaux et al look specifically at Papa Andina, a “regional initiative that promote pro-poor development” as an example of the success of collective action to break into markets (Devaux et al, 3). This group consolidates native potatoes produced in rural areas and packages them to be sold in urban grocery stores and markets. In this way, the farmers can maintain cultivation of what has been produced historically and culturally while making a small profit.

Challenges in this sort of work include having effective facilitation for the collectives, “ensuring the sustainability of collective action”, growth and the challenges of scaling up, initial costs of participating, and gender equity (Devaux et al, 36). The balance has to be maintained between what farmers are growing to subsist and what they are growing for market, as well as making sure that markets are sustained and that the income is relatively constant.

However challenging the process of developing collectives is, they can be enormously beneficial to the communities. While it takes time and effort to develop these groups, make sure they have effective leadership, and find markets for the products, collective action “can stimulate innovation in ways that contribute to smallholder market integration and poverty reduction” (Devaux et al, 38).

While collective action cannot realistically be implemented across the globe, whether on a large scale, due to global economic pressures or, on a small scale, the lack of adequate leadership in a community, it seems to be working in Bolivia. In a country where 59 percent of the rural population does not have the income to meet basic food needs, improving the income and production capacity of communities is crucial (WFP). While the government of Bolivia remains unstable, I believe that collective action could solve food issues in these specific areas of rural Bolivia. I agree that the country could benefit from government regulation, as suggested by the PPLPI. However, I think that organizations like Papa Andina are the most beneficial in rural Bolivia, both on an economic and social level. While farmers in India and elsewhere slowly lose their ancient seed as agribusiness moves in with the new, I think it is important for the indigenous peoples to be able to make a living from their native varieties as a way of preserving their way of life. The best thing the “developed world” can do is to facilitate the formation and development of effective facilitators to improve the chances of successful collective action groups.

Works Cited

"Bolivia." WFP | United Nations World Food Programme - Fighting Hunger Worldwide. 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. .

Devaux, Andre, Claudio Velasco, Gaston Lopez, Thomas Bernet, Miguel Ordinola, Hernan Pico, Graham Thiele, and Douglas Horton. "Collective Action for Innovation and Small Farmer Market Access: The Papa Andina Experience." CAPRi and IFPRI, Oct. 2007. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. .

Fairfield, Tasha. "The Politics of Livestock Sector Policy and the Rural Poor." FAO and PPLPI, 2004. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. .

Monge, Mario, Frank Hartwich, and Daniel Halgin. "How Change Agents and Social Capital Influence the Adoption of Innovations among Small Farmers." IFPRI, Apr. 2008. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. .