Why it is important to convince the world that women farmers are an essential part of the solution?

Question

In the midst of a global food crisis?

Advocates have these opinions:

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/061308.html

Which are your opinions?

Answer 1

My dear friend i'am sorry havent had time to look up my friend's questions because of the crusades here.

Wemen farmers are extremely essential and without them the farmer force would not exist as an entity.

In india i have observed and i'am ashamed to admit that a lot of male farmers just sit lazily while their wives as women farmers sweat it out.

A woman has the womb and the hands to grow food besides the other essential contributions of a woman to the society and therefore there importance is indisputable.

Flyinghorse i'am amazed to see Wendyg a very old friend here this is great!!!

Answer 2

I farmed for 25 years, mostly soybeans and registered Red Duroc hogs.  My husband did crops.  I did livestock.  We shared all responsibilities including household and childrearing.  But, when it was time to deal with the government in any way, like sending a hay sample off to state for protein count or talk with ag-extension about new cultivating methods or get a loan, all the 9-5 personnel were highly paid male government employees who had never farmed and who refused, politely, to deal directly with me.  They spoke only with my husband, who was NOT the strong one in the team with finances.  I use to sit there in those meetings like a squaw muttering stuff like, "Wow. I must have missed that in my high school quantum mechanics class".  (I was young and unaware of any other way to address the sexual discrimination.

But, female farmers in developed nations don't have the same problem that women in the nations targeted in your linked article.  I've been to all of those nations where 60-80% of all food production is being handled by females, as it always traditionally has been, specifically to observe agricultural practices, or morbid complete lack of them.  The situation that makes developed world people "give-up" on societies like mentioned in the article is not the women.  It's the males and the total lack of social structure.  It's basically baboon land with males plundering, raping, raping even infants, stealing crops before they're ready to harvest, just walking right up in gangs and taking all the crop away from women and children during harvest, just walking into women's homes and taking all their aid supplies or tools or whatever. . . a total baboon paradigm.  Not a single aid worker returns from those places with any sympathy for any such morbid society shaped and decided upon by baboons.  Even with AIDS, so-called male leaders in Africa were telling their people as fast as health care workers were explaining the disease that the disease wasn't really a disease, that spiritual interventions were more effective, that the western medicine would hurt them.  How can neolithic magical-thinking people make it in the modern world unless they are educated and protected from themselves long enough to grow a stable culture that can survive in the mordern world? Why are we allowing so many people to suffer in the hands of baboons?  

Westerners plundered lands and people for hundreds of years now and did everything they could, including deliberately spreading smallpox to kill off the Australian endogenous population and locking natives out of any educational opportunity until their societies collapsed unto themselves in magical-thinking and primitive levels of social consciousness in the face of more advanced social consciousness levels that were exploitive?

The developed world has a moral responsibility to help those people just catching up with the 20th century in time for the 21st, especially the children.  But, you cannot help people who do not want to be helped, who decide, who CHOOSE as free people to cling to old ways that clearly keep them in pre-neolithic conditions.  People cannot to make a go of any agricultural endeavor until they have a social revolution and join the 21st century in terms of paradigm.  I do not feel it is wise to support people who choose not to make a concerted effort to do what it takes to rise above their own poverty, including acting against their men and baboon paradigm.  The women in most nations where baboons are in charge need M16's, not seeds.  Developed nations would arm those women if they were men.  But, because they are women and children, we let the suffering continue because?

The World Bank's U.N. Millenium Group Goals organization with the U.N. include global universal educational access in a few years for all women, children and men in the world.  Hunger and suffering prevail wherever rational education is absent and in its place are superstition, magical-thinking and baboon paradigms. The first Millenium Goals are to reduce poverty, achieve universal primary education and promote gender equality and empower women.  Not until women are educated and can rise in organizational clout will even the most fundamental agricultural training program be effective in societies that morbid.

Answer 3

I think "an illiterate African peasant woman" SHOULD be sitting next to a "male first world scientist" to help determine what should be done about the global food crisis. The "peasants, whether male or female, are the ones living it, and understand the challenges they are facing, AND because "illiterate" does not mean stupid, they can give the "male scientists" (because we know there are no female scientists, of course) a helpful perspective on what needs to be done locally, and perhaps have a different perspective on what needs to be done globally. Those "male scientists" of the first world, like the rest of the first world, aren't starving. And they  generally work for corporations in the first world, whose main goal is to make money, not feed starving people.

It IS an insightful article, and one that the "first world" should give heed to, if we care at all about the suffering of others.

"Some" sarcasm...can you detect where?

Answer 4

I think an illiterate african peasant woman should be siting next to highly educated- highly knowledgable first world male scientists just because she in some way contributes to food production

What an insightful article...

Answer 5

farmers are mean meat eaters

Answer 6

Hey a lot of women had actually shaped our world in such a positive way. Whoever thinks not is a moron.

Back in the past there had been women who were teachers, secretaries, principals, deans, professors, scientists, biologists, zoologists, storekeepers, beauticians, doctors, pharmacists, gynecologists,nurses, businesswomen, saleswomen, caregivers, councilors, seamstresses, fashion designers, authors, historians and artists.

Answer 7

having travelled a lot, i have seen first-hand how women work on farms.  they do produce the majority of the world's food, yet they own something like 1% of the land in the world.

beside producing food, they also prepare it for their families.

women are a vital key and yet are overlooked in the food crisis, land allocations, property rights, and free trade agreements that affect farming.  its nothing short of a disgrace that "big wigs" ignore such a vital key......it's mind boggling. there's hope of it changing as ppl start to say "what about the women????" and when ppl stop being afraid of talking about women's issues b/c they do affect their spouses and children's lives directly....

it has been said that if you want a country to develop, you have to think about the women.....we will not make progress otherwise by leaving the mothers of children and wives of husbands stranded in the dust in back-breaking jobs, not receiving an education b/c boys "deserve" the resources, not having opportunities to get loans or buy land (or have laws that allow women to own land, as archaeic as that sounds its true).....

peace...