Poverty is mainly rural, and more female than male. But when it comes to climate change adaptation and food, women play a key role in our future.
“The Land here belonged to my deceased parents. As I’ve learned, to breed the coffee plants, I’ve brought up this nursery as a company.”
In a Video from the world food organization FAO, Betty Ndugga(picture) told in the Luwero district in Uganda, and their history. When her husband died, she left with her children in the city and moved to the village of her parents, has taken over the country.
Statistically, Betty Ndugga and their children would have slipped into poverty. More than three out of four people live in extreme poverty, living on the Land. The women are doubly disadvantaged: they have less access to education, credit or land rights than men.
In a FAO training Betty Ndugga has learned to grow coffee plants. Your plants are resistant to wilt against the dreaded Coffee, a disease that was long considered nearly eradicated, but today, rapidly spreading, and millions of trees destroyed.
Betty Ndugga now has 30 employees, working in the nursery, many of them are women. The plants are sold to local coffee farmers, but also by the Ugandan coffee authority, UCDA (Uganda Coffee Development Authority) is offered.
Coffee is the biggest export of Uganda, but with increasing global warming and irregular precipitation as a result of climate change, to take the coffee diseases. Around 3.5 million people live in Uganda out of coffee production, 85 percent of them are small farmers with plots between one-half and two and a half acres. The whole country is of the coffee production as dependent as Germany of the automotive industry.
Women feed the world
Worldwide, it is the small farms that grow much of the food. More than 2.5 billion people work in small-scale farming, almost half of them are women.
Women feed the world – like this farmer in the Northern Uganda
“In South Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa, every second person in agriculture is a woman. In the Global South, women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food. And although they usually have fewer resources than men.”
Fraser Patterson of the German world hunger aid is responsible for the annual global hunger index. He sees the causes for the increase in world hunger in recent years, especially in armed conflicts and climate change.
Both of these factors women hit particularly hard. In the war, in the refugee camps and on the run, they are the victims of violence. Around half of the country’s population are women, who particularly suffer from increasing droughts, Floods, due to climate and plant and animal diseases and other consequences of climate change. The small farms do not have the resources to overcome natural disasters and crop failures, or to invest in new methods of cultivation. The women are also the first, the rising food prices, is felt:
“Women are not only for the production of food, but also in the family to be distributed,” emphasized Patterson. “They are for cooking and for the nutrition of the children.”
Women are also in the family is responsible for the diet
In most cases, the order for the food: First the men, then the boys, then the girls and finally women.
Fight against hunger through Empowerment
However, as Patterson, to show the experience that matters in the fight against Hunger and extreme poverty in the country especially on women:
“There are statistics that show that when women have equal access to land right, have to loans to markets, and to education as men, then the production increases by 20 to 30 percent.”
The world food organization FAO estimates that about 150 million people would go hungry if women in developing countries would have the same support and opportunities as men. Currently, the FAO estimates that more than 820 million people go hungry worldwide.
With a savings cooperative of women to take the fate in their own hands (photo: Sarwan, India)
The recommendation of the FAO: women and the disadvantaged groups of the population on the Land, access to land rights, education and small loans to give. Thus, there are more women like Betty Ndugga in Uganda, which nourishes not only your own family with your nursery, but also 30 other people in the village. The method has also proved successful in our projects, said Fraser Patterson, of the world hunger help:
“We see how small farmers can adapt to climate change, for example, by growing a number of different products, or by you have access to reliable weather.”
However, the investments in smallholder agriculture are generally low, whether for women or men. According to a study by the development organisation Oxfam, less than five percent of the international climate change adjustment assistance for small farmers are provided.