Next month, hundreds of participants, including ministers, World Food Prize
Laureates, farmers, gender experts, leading scientists, community
development organizations and innovators will gather in New Delhi, India
for *the first international conference to comprehensively address the
gender gap in agriculture.*
Though women comprise 43 percent of the agricultural labor force of
developing countries, they face rampant restrictions on their ability to
buy, sell or inherit land; open a savings account; borrow money; or sell
their crops at market. Their ability to produce food is further hampered by
a lack of access to rudimentary basics of farming such as fertilizers,
water, tillers, transport, extension services, and mobile phones, along
with an unnecessary amount of drudgery.
The Global Conference on Women in Agriculture
about one year after the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) released a report
access to such “productive resources” used to produce, process, and take
food to market could increase yields on women’s farms by 20 to 30 percent.
Turning around this crop yield gap, could raise total agriculture output in
developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent and thus reduce the number of
hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 percent or by some 100 to150 million
people.
The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) is organizing the
conference as part of the Gender in Agriculture
Partnership
a global program addressing gender and agriculture. It is co-sponsored by
the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Asian-Pacific
Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI).
*WHO: *
*H.E. Pratibha Devisingh Patil*, President of India
*Bina Agarwal*, Director & Professor of Economics, University of Delhi
*S. Ayyappan*, Secretary, Department of Agriculture Research and Education
(DARE), and Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research
(ICAR)
*Lynn Brown*, Chief Food Security and Safety Nets, World Food Programme
(WFP)
*Matia Chowdhury*, Agriculture Minister, Bangladesh
*Monty Jones*, World Food Prize Laureate, Chairman of the Global Forum on
Agricultural Research (GFAR)
*Jo Luck*, World Food Prize Laureate, Board Member, USAID Board for
International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD)
*Raj Paroda*, Executive Secretary, Asian-Pacific Association of
Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI)
*Sharad Pawar*, Union Minister of Agriculture and Food Processing
Industries, Government of India
*Esther Penunia*, Secretary General, Asian Farmers’ Association for
Sustainable and Rural Development (AFA)
*Prabhu Pingali*, Deputy Director, Agriculture Development, Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation Nafis Sadik, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General
and UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia-Pacific
*Lindiwe Sibanda*, CEO, Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy
Analysis Network (FANRPAN)
*Idah Sithole-Niang*, Steering Committee, African Agricultural Technology
Foundation (AATF, Kenya) and Associate Professor, University of Zimbabwe
*M.S. Swaminthan*, World Food Prize Laureate, Member of Parliament, India
*Gülden Türköz-Cosslett*, Director, Programme Support Division, UN Women
*Vicki Wilde*, Director, CGIAR Gender & Diversity Program (G&D) and African
Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD)
*For a full list of speakers, please see the latest program
*WHEN: * March 13-15, 2012 *WHERE: * NASC Complex, New Delhi, India **
Gender inequality is closely linked to hunger, given that women are
responsible for household nutrition. And while India had seen the second
fastest GDP growth rate in the world from 2000 to 2008, it has a low
ranking on gender in social indicator indexes across the board–and more
than 350 million people who are undernourished. According to the recent FAO
report, when women control additional income, they spend more than men do
on food, health, clothing and education for their children. Unfortunately,
many policies on agricultural production have been developed with little
consideration for household incomes, nutrition and health. This approach
has had detrimental effects in developing countries where nutrition has
been devalued, as has the opportunity for women to create income
opportunities through adding value to agricultural produce.
Ensuring we can feed a total of nine billion people by 2050 with crops
ravaged by drought, floods, and other weather extremes is the single
greatest challenge of our time. Two and a half billion smallholder farmers
are the key for boosting global food production. However, a global
agriculture system and agricultural innovations designed for males are
holding back smallholder farms and ultimately robbing millions from having
enough to eat. An estimated 925 million people across the world, the
majority of them in developing countries, were undernourished in 2010.
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