A farmer from a women-run vegetable cooperative grows cabbages in Sierra Leone. Credit: FAO/Sebastian Liste

By Danielle Nierenberg and Emily Payne
BALTIMORE, Maryland / DENVER, Colorado, May 1 2023 (IPS)

Studies consistently show that women have lower rates of agricultural productivity compared to men in the region, but it’s not because they’re less efficient farmers.

Women in sub-Saharan Africa often lead food storage, handling, stocking, processing, and marketing in addition to other household tasks and childcare. Yet they severely lack the resources they need to produce food.

A 2019 United Nations policy brief reports that giving women equal access to agricultural inputs is critical to closing this gender gap in productivity while also raising crop production.

And last year, the 17th Tanzania Economic Update showed that bridging the gap could lift about 80,000 Tanzanians out of poverty every year and boost annual gross domestic product growth by 0.86 percent.

This makes a clear economic case for investing in women, but public policies frequently overlook gender-specific needs and equality issues. Instead, organizations across the region have been stepping up to help break down the barriers that have traditionally held sub-Saharan African women back.

The West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), Africa’s largest sub-regional research organization, runs a database of gender-sensitive technologies, ones that are low-cost and labor-saving for women across the region.

It also developed a series of initiatives to provide training in seed production, distribution, storage, and planting techniques for women. These programs are specifically designed with women’s needs and preferences in mind, such as prioritizing drought resistance or early maturity in crops.

This is an important shift. While we’re seeing an increasing number of exciting technologies and innovations tackling the food systems’ biggest challenges, unless these technologies are gender-sensitive—meaning they address the unique needs and challenges faced by women farmers—they will not be effective.

But empowering women means more than just facilitating access to technologies. Women must also be supported to lead the discoveries, inventions, and research of the future.

The West Africa Agriculture Productivity Program (WAAPP), a sub-regional initiative launched by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with the financial support of the World Bank and collaboration with CORAF, has specifically targeted initiatives for women farmers as well as women researchers.

Since 2008, 3 out of every 10 researchers trained under the WAAPP have been women.

And in just the past few years, more exciting networks are emerging to support women leading agriculture: In 2019, the African Women in Agribusiness Network launched to promote women’s leadership in African agribusiness. In 2020, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched the Women in Agribusiness Investment Network to help bridge the gender financing gap.

And in 2021, the African Women in Seed program was created to support women’s participation in the seed sector through training, mentorship, and networking opportunities for women seed entrepreneurs.

Empowering women in the food system is not simply a matter of social justice and equality; sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford to leave women behind.

Nearly a third of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is undernourished. Meanwhile, it’s one of the fastest-growing populations in the world, expected to double by 2050 and dramatically increase demand.

Women are the backbone of communities and the food system at large in sub-Saharan Africa, and the region’s future economic development and environmental sustainability depend on them. While women are now playing a more active role in the food system, we need more women in leadership at all levels.

Rwanda’s female-led parliament, one of the highest proportions of women parliamentarians in the world, has been instrumental in not only advancing women’s rights but promoting economic development and improving governance. We need more of this.

With the resources, recognition, and support they need and deserve, women will lead the region to a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient future.

Sub-Saharan Africa can achieve the transformation it so critically needs, but only if we support women in the food system now.

Danielle Nierenberg is President, Food Tank; Emily Payne is Food Tank researcher.

IPS UN Bureau

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The World Food Programme (WFP) says 41 million people around the world, including in Nigeria (pictured) are at imminent risk of famine. Credit: UNOCHA/ Eve Sabbagh

By Danielle Nierenberg
NEW ORLEANS, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

When I first met Dr. Roland Bunch, I have to be honest—he scared me. As one of the most well-respected leaders on agronomy and resilient land management, he offers extremely prescient predictions on how famines take root when soils fail—and also has an admirably clear-eyed view of what we need to do better.

When we first met in the mid-2000s, I was at the Worldwatch Institute and invited him to contribute a chapter to a book I was writing. He described how farmers in Malawi and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were noticing their soil was getting tired.

Maize yields were unpredictable and decreasing year to year—problematic when that’s the crop you depend on most for both consumption and sale to earn your livelihood. Droughts were a major concern, but Dr. Bunch understood that farmers were, rightly, more worried about loss of soil fertility.

Droughts and depleted soils can be difficult to distinguish. While fertile soils can soak up and retain what little rain does fall, depleted soils become compacted and water simply runs off, so each problem accentuates the other.

Plus, when farmers are facing infertile soils, they are more likely to move to new areas of land, which unfortunately eats up arable land without regenerating it. And in some cases, folks give up farming altogether and move to cities, where it’s difficult for them to find jobs that match their skills.

He wrote this warning right around the 2007–08 food and financial collapse, which stretched into riots and famines around the globe over the next half-decade. And unfortunately, we may be back where we were then.
Dr. Bunch warns that the coming famine will be a “hurricane of hunger,” which sounds ominous to me and so many of us who work in this space. But things are not hopeless.

Over the past 20 years, one of the so-called solutions that’s been heavily promoted in places like Malawi are fertilizer subsidies and artificial fertilizers—which are not the answer.

We forget that artificial fertilizer should be used sparingly like medicine, to help get farmers over a hump or temporarily boost soil quality to allow for better use of organic matter.

But unfortunately, subsidies have led to farmers becoming dependent on artificial soil amendments and have actively disincentivized growing a more diverse set of crops or using organics to fertilize soils in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and more.

One of the answers to what we’re seeing around soil infertility are cover crops and ‘green manure’ (which refers not to colorful animal poop but rather the practice of growing certain crops to turn or incorporate back into the soil).

These can be things like bushes, trees, and vines that help improve soil quality, control weeds, and retain water. Other great options are crops like cowpeas and scarlet runner beans, which people can eat.

This is something else we often forget when we’re talking about how to keep folks from being hungry: The foods people have depended on for generations are not only regenerative but also delicious! Farmers have an opportunity,

Roland says, to return to growing these indigenous crops—sometimes called forgotten crops or orphan crops—that are resilient to droughts, have deep root structures to keep water and nutrients in soils, grow perennially so they don’t need to be replanted every year, and taste really, really good.

Between crises like climate change, soil depletion, global conflicts, and Covid’s supply chain fallout, the bottom line—and it’s a sobering one—is that we’re facing a massive famine and that “hurricane of hunger” over the next year.

I’ve talked before in this newsletter about the power of citizen eaters and the participatory democracies Frances Moore Lappé advocates for—but for these ideas to actually translate into powerful results, we need governments that are actively engaging in agriculture.

Roland says it’s possible to end hunger in one generation, and quite inexpensively, but only if we have the will to do so. We’ll need action from leaders in policy, business, and more to invest in helping farmers adopt greener, more regenerative soil practices.

As he says, better soils lead to better lives—which is more urgent now than ever before.

I want to thank and commend Dr. Roland Bunch for his leadership and—seriously—for scaring me. His predictions not only frighten me but also give me hope. He tells us how bad things can be—but also how good things can be if, again, we have that political engagement.

I’ve included more writing from Dr. Bunch and other luminaries in the Learn More section below, and as always, please shoot me an email at danielle@foodtank.com with your perspectives and ideas for how we move forward.

Danielle Nierenberg is President of Food Tank and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. She has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world and innovations in sustainable agriculture.

IPS UN Bureau

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The global food system needs a massive overhaul – this was clear before the Covid pandemic and it is even more true today.

Feeding the world in a sustainable and healthy way is entirely possible but it is also inextricably linked to tackling the climate crisis by reaching net zero emissions, and to halting the dizzying decline in bio-diversity which is currently threatening the survival of one million plant and animal species.

Danielle Nierenberg

That reality, exacerbated by Covid-19, is a looming global food emergency, triggered by a combination of climate extremes, economic shocks of rising food prices and joblessness, as well as protracted armed conflicts.

The UN is warning that this year 41 million people across 43 countries are at imminent risk of famine. This compares with 27 million in 2019. Famine-like conditions are worsening in Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen.

More people are dying of hunger around the world each day than from Covid.

On the climate front, greenhouse gas emissions are rebounding after a relatively short hiatus caused by economic slowdowns, reaching new highs in 2021.

Transforming our food systems is thus not just about feeding people. Production and transport of food accounts for about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial animal agriculture and increased mono-cropping with over-use of pesticides and fertilizers are major drivers of biodiversity loss.

The UN Environment Program has recently issued its damning analysis of the industrial food system, with low retail costs in developed countries obscuring the massive damage caused to the environment, as well as epidemics of malnutrition and obesity and increased transmission of diseases between animals and humans.

We have to feed the world equitably in a sustainable way. Science, technology and more efficient market mechanisms are just one part of the solution. The greater challenge lies in addressing genuine land and agrarian reforms. Often it is the industrial food system and the corporate sector that holds the rights over the use of land, water, crops, plants and seeds – not those who produce and consume food.

Small farmers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples must be heard and respected, and the injustices of land grabbing must be reversed. Truly regenerative and restorative food systems cannot leave these people behind. Women, who produce much more food than recognised, and youth who struggle to access land need political empowerment.

The pandemic that has disrupted global food production has disproportionately affected women farmers and food producers who were already excluded from full participation in agricultural development. Food policies must not be gender blind and the needs of women should be at the forefront of responses to mass disasters. Imagine the changes that could really happen if we had women farmers running municipalities, towns and even countries.

Even during the depths of the pandemic, the threat for many people of poor nutrition and inadequate food was caused by loss of incomes and livelihoods, not shortage of food itself. But economic insecurity goes hand in hand with the climate crisis.

The world is facing radical choices. This decade must be one of decisive action as we strive to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. New powerful and all-embracing alliances are needed to avoid a silo mentality that divides issues and communities. Governments, companies, institutions and citizens have to come together to reset food systems.

As members of civil society we have a responsibility to carry over the positive elements of the UN Food Systems Summit held in New York last week and make up for its deficiencies too. The issue of food must be addressed at the UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November and again at the UN biodiversity summit in Kunming next year.

We are on the cusp of a new era. The warning signals on climate, biodiversity and food crises have been repeatedly and clearly flagged by experts. If we have the individual and collective courage to act then our decisive responses to the pandemic can soon set us on the way to a more healthy, sustainable and just food system.

Danielle Nierenberg is co-founder and president of Food Tank, a nonprofit organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters.

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Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Danielle Nierenberg
NEW YORK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

Wealthier countries struggling to contain the widening COVID-19 pandemic amid protests over lockdowns and restrictions risk ignoring an even greater danger out there – a looming global food emergency.

Even before the virus surfaced nearly a year ago, an estimated 690 million people around the world were undernourished, 144 million or 21 per cent of children under five-years-old were stunted, and about 57 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia could not afford a healthy diet.

The ranks of the chronically food insecure are rising dramatically in 2020 as the pandemic adds to the miseries of communities already labouring under conflict, the climate crisis, economic slowdowns and, in east Africa, desert locusts. Every percentage drop in global GDP means 700,000 more stunted children, according to UN estimates.

All this means the world is dangerously off track in its efforts to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, with food systems underpinning all 17 of those targets.

Yet we do produce enough food for the world’s 7.8 billion people. It’s our food systems that are broken. Hunger is rising even as the world wastes and loses more than one billion tonnes of food every year.

About one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, with consumers in rich countries wasting almost as much food as the entire net production of sub-Saharan Africa.

Danielle Nierenberg

Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork, a virtual event hosted on December 1 by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition in partnership with Food Tank, will help set the stage for the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Experts will present concrete, practical solutions to re-align food systems with human needs and planetary boundaries to become more resilient, inclusive and sustainable in the aftermath of the pandemic and beyond.

The conference will highlight the important role of smallholders and women who make up a sizeable proportion of the agricultural workforce – 43 percent on average in developing countries, according to FAO, the UN food agency.

Women are tending to bear the brunt of hunger, but as farmers, innovators and decision-makers, they need to be involved for real change to happen. They are the backbone of the rural economy, especially in poorer countries, but receive only a fraction of the land, credit, inputs such as improved seeds and fertilizers, agricultural training and information compared to men.

Africa is a huge net importer of food but 75 per cent of crops grown in sub-Saharan Africa are produced by smallholder farms, with family farms estimated to number over 100 million. Women do the bulk of weeding work while three-quarters of children aged 5 to 14 are forced to leave school and do farm labour at peak times.

Sixty percent of Africa’s total population are below 25 year, yet countries are struggling to keep young people involved in agriculture and agribusiness.

Our challenge is to transform food systems so that people are no longer food insecure and can afford a healthy diet while at the same time ensuring environmental sustainability. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for countries, and policy-makers lack reliable data on the whole spectrum of food production.

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition has a 10-point action plan for fixing the global food system, and improving standards, terminology and measurement are among those priorities. Its Food Sustainability Index, developed with the Economist Intelligence Unit, uses the three pillars of nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food loss and waste to provide a tool that can shed light on the progress countries are making on the path to a more sustainable food system.

The COVID-19 pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world this year alone, depending on the scale of the economic slowdown, according to preliminary assessments.

Disruptions have raised food costs, made it more difficult for farmers to access seeds, animal feed and fertilisers, and resulted in higher post-harvest losses as food rots uncollected on farms.

In the words of UN Special Envoy Agnes Kalibata: “Countries face an agonizing trade-off between saving lives or livelihoods or, in a worst-case scenario, saving people from COVID-19 to have them die from hunger.”

The problems facing our food systems for years have been highlighted by this crisis, as have the numerous frailties of global supply chains and the state of national health systems.

Let us seize this opportunity presented by the pandemic and shape a resilient food system that is sustainable, fairer, and healthier for all people and the planet.

Podcast: “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg“ I chat with the most important folks in the food system about the most important food news.

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Excerpt:

Credit: Food Tank

By Danielle Nierenberg
Aug 7 2020 (IPS)

These 28 organizations are preserving Indigenous food systems and promoting Indigenous food sovereignty through the rematriation of Indigenous land, seeds, food and histories.

The world’s Indigenous Peoples face severe and disproportionate rates of food insecurity. While Indigenous Peoples comprise 5 percent of the world’s population, they account for 15 percent of the world’s poor, according to the World Health Organization.

But through seed saving initiatives, financial support, mentorship, and community feeding programs, many organizations are working to protect Indigenous food sovereignty—the ability to grow, eat, and share food according to their own traditions and values.

“We must care for this [natural] abundance as it will nourish our families—both physically as well as spiritually,” said Maenette K. P. Ah Nee-Benham, Chancellor of the University of Hawai’i at West O’ahu at a Food Tank Summit in partnership with the Arizona State University Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems on the wisdom of Indigenous foodways.

In honor of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9, Food Tank is highlighting 28 organizations from around the world protecting and cultivating Indigenous food systems. Through what many of the following organizations call rematration, they strive to return Indigenous lands, seeds, foods, and histories to Indigenous Peoples and protect them for future generations.

1. Aboriginal Carbon Foundation (Oceania)
The Aboriginal Carbon Foundation is building a carbon farming industry in Australia by Aboriginals, for Aboriginals. The Foundation offers training and support for new Indigenous farmers so they can learn how to capture atmospheric carbon in the soil. The carbon farming projects generate certified Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU), which major carbon-producing businesses must purchase to offset their carbon emissions. Income generated by ACCUs is reinvested in Aboriginal communities by the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation and its participating farmers.

2. AgroEcology Fund (International)
The AgroEcology Fund (AEF) galvanizes global leaders and experts to fund biodiverse and regenerative agriculture projects worldwide. Projects funded by AEF have included Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives, agroecology training institutions, and women’s market access networks on every continent. With the support of governments and financial institutions, AEF hopes that agroecology will become the standard model for food production worldwide within thirty years.

3. Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (Asia)
The Asia Indigenous People Pact is an alliance of Indigenous organizations across southern and eastern Asia. Collectively, the Pact promotes and protects Indigenous lands, food systems, and biodiversity. Their alliance is bolstered by regional youth and women’s networks, as well as support from international institutions, including the United Nations and Oxfam.

4. Association of Guardians of the Native Potato from Central Peru (South America)
The Association of Guardians of the Native Potato from Central Peru (AGUAPAN) is a collective of Indigenous farmers. Each farmer grows between 50 and 300 ancestral varieties of potato, which are indigenous to the Andes Mountains of modern-day Peru. AGUAPAN farmers preserve the crop’s biodiversity in their native communities and band together to advocate for economic, gender, education, and healthcare equity.

5. Cheyenne River Youth Project (North America)
The Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, South Dakota has served Lakota youth for more than three decades. Its Native Food Sovereignty initiative offers public workshops on Three Sisters gardening of corn, beans, and squash. They also offer classes on Indigenous plants, gardening, and cooking. Their Winyan Tokay Win (Leading Lady) Garden serves as an outdoor classroom to reacquaint Lakota children with the earth. Their other programs use food grown in the garden for meals and snacks. They also sell surplus crops at their weekly Leading Lady Farmer’s Market.

6. Dream of Wild Health (North America)
Dream of Wild Health runs a 10-acre farm just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their Indigenous Food Share CSA program and farmer’s market booths sell produce and value-added products grown by Native Americans. During the summer, Dream of Wild Health offers a Garden Warriors program where children can learn about seed saving, foraging, farmers market management, and other aspects of food sovereignty. They also host the Indigenous Food Network (IFN), a collective of Indigenous partners who advocate for local and regional policy changes. The IFN also hosts community food tasting events featuring prominent Indigenous chefs.

7. First Peoples Worldwide (International)
First Peoples Worldwide was founded by Cherokee social entrepreneur Rebecca Adamson to help businesses to align with First Peoples’ rights. Now a part of the University of Colorado’s Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, First Peoples Worldwide continues to ensure that Indigenous voices are at the forefront of decision-making processes affecting their own self-determination. The organization works with businesses and institutions to assess their investments and guide them in incorporating Indigenous Peoples’ rights and interests into their business decisions.

8. Indigikitchen (North America)
Mariah Gladstone’s Indigikitchen uses Native foods as resistance. Her cooking videos offer healthy, creative ways to eat pre-contact, Indigenous foods. The recipes abstain from highly-processed grains, dairy, and sugar, ingredients that did not become standard in diets of the Americas until European colonization. Indigikitchen hopes that its recipes inspire Indigenous cooks to connect with Native foods.

9. Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative (North America)
The Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas provides model policies for Tribal governments to help promote and protect food sovereignty. They also co-organize the Native Farm Bill Coalition with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, the Intertribal Agriculture Council, and the National Congress of American Indians. The Initiative hosts annual Native Youth in Food and Agriculture Leadership Summits, where American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian youth can learn about agricultural business, land stewardship, agricultural law, and more.

10. Indigenous Food Systems Network (North America)
The Indigenous Food Systems Network (IFSN) is a convener of Indigenous food producers, researchers, and policymakers across the 98 Indigenous nations of Canada. IFSN supports research, policy reform, and direct action that builds food sovereignty in Indigenous communities. The organization’s Indigenous Food Sovereignty email listserv offers its subscribers everything from stories and legends to recipes and policy reform tools.

11. Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (International)
Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty is an international organization based in Rome, Italy connecting the world’s Indigenous People to agricultural research and advocacy groups. With Indigenous communities from China to India and Thailand to Latin America, Indigenous Partnerships forges dialogues within Indigenous communities to ensure free, prior, and informed consent between research and advocacy partners. Indigenous Partnerships also seeks to incorporate global and local Indigenous knowledge into non-Indigenous knowledge systems.

12. Indigenous Terra Madre (International)
Indigenous Terra Madre is a global network of Indigenous Peoples sponsored by Slow Food, an international institution based in Rome, Italy. The network amplifies Indigenous voices and protects the biodiversity of the crops Indigenous communities cultivate. By providing a platform for Indigenous communities to pool power and resources, Indigenous Terra Madre fights to defend the land, culture, and opportunity of all Indigenous Peoples.

13. Intertribal Agriculture Council (North America)
The American Indian Food Program by the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC) helps Native American and Alaskan Native agribusinesses and food entrepreneurs expand their market reach. The Made/Produced by American Indians Trademark promoted by the IAC identifies certified American Indian products and is used by over 500 businesses. IAC’s other major American Indian Food Program, Native Food Connection, helps market Native American foods and food producers across the United States. IAC also offers technical and natural resource assistance to connect Native businesses with U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and conservation stewardship resources.

14. Inuit Circumpolar Council-Alaska (North America)
Through its Alaskan Inuit Food Sovereignty Initiative, the Inuit Circumpolar Council-Alaska is convening Inuit community leaders from across Alaska. The Initiative seeks to unify Inuit throughout the state to advocate for land and wildlife management sovereignty. The Initiative also strives for international cooperation to promote food sovereignty across Inuit Nunaat.

15. Mantasa (Asia)
Mantasa is a research institution in Indonesia dedicated to expanding the number of indigenous plants consumed by the Javanese people. According to Mantasa, only 20 plant species comprise 90 percent of Javanese food needs. Their research is incorporating new wild foods from Indonesia’s vast biodiversity into Javanese diets to improve food security and nutrition. Mantasa also helps promote these foods to consumers and local farmers to increase their popularity.

16. Muonde Trust (Africa)
In Mazvhiwa, Zimbabwe, the Muonde Trust invests in Indigenous innovations in food, land, and water management. The Trust seeks out individuals with new ideas and provides peer-to-peer support to help bring those ideas to life. Muonde Trust currently supports innovations in indigenous seed saving and sharing, livestock and woodland management, irrigation systems, and constructing kitchen spaces.

17. Native American Agriculture Fund (North America)
The Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF) is the largest philanthropic supporter of Native American agriculture. The Fund offers grants to Tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions to support healthy lands, healthy people, and healthy economies. In 2020, NAAF is offering US$1 million in grant funds specifically for youth initiatives and young farmers and ranchers. NAAF is also centralizing COVID-19 relief information for Native farmers, ranchers, fishers, and Tribal governments.

18. Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (North America)
The Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA) places Indigenous farmers, wild-crafters, fishers, hunters, ranchers, and eaters at the center of the fight to restore Indigenous food systems and self-determination. NAFSA’s primary initiatives are the Indigenous Seedkeepers Network, the Food and Culinary Mentorship Program, and their Native Food Sovereignty Events. Each of these initiatives centers around the reclamation of Indigenous seeds and foods.

19. Native Seed/SEARCH (North America)
Native Seed/SEARCH preserves and proliferates indigenous seeds through their Native Access programs. Their Native American Seed Request program offers free seed packets to Native Americans living in or originating from the Greater Southwestern Region. The Bulk Seed Exchange allows growers to pay it forward by returning 1.5 times the seeds they receive to be put towards future Native American Seed Request packs. While Native Seed/SEARCH sells an assortment of popular seeds to the general public, its collection of indigenous seeds are only available to Native farmers and families. They hope these seeds will revitalize traditional foods and build food sovereignty.

20. Navajo Ethno-Agriculture (North America)
Navajo Ethno-Agriculture is sustaining Navajo culture through lessons on traditional farming. The seasonal courses focus on land, water, and food as students cultivate, harvest, and prepare heritage crops. During COVID-19, Navajo Ethno-Agriculture suspended its courses and is focusing on supplying neighboring farms with heritage seeds and farm equipment. They are also offering food processing and packaging services to protect and rejuvenate soil.

21. North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (North America)
Founded by the chefs of The Sioux Chef, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NāTIFS) is reimagining the North American food system as a generator of wealth and good health for Native communities. The organization seeks to reverse the effects of forced assimilation and colonization through food entrepreneurship and a reclamation of ancestral education. NāTIFS is establishing an Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a training center and restaurant for Native chefs and food. NāTIFS plans to eventually spread this model across North America.

22. Oyate Teca Project (North America)
In response to dire food access on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota, the Oyate Teca Project offers year-long classes in gardening, food entrepreneurship, and traditional food preservation techniques. Oyate Teca helps make local foods available to the community by selling produce grown in their half-acre garden at farmer’s markets. The project also serves as an emergency food provider for families and children.

23. Tebtebba (Asia)
Tebtebba is an international organization based in the Philippines committed to sharing global Indigenous wisdom. Its Indigenous Peoples and Biodiversity project strengthens Indigenous organizations’ research, policy advocacy, and education on biodiversity. The project also works directly with Indigenous communities to strengthen their governance structures, protect their land, and improve their food security.

24. Sierra Seeds (North America)
Rowan White and her organization, Sierra Seeds, are dedicated to the next generation of farmers, gardeners, and food justice activists. Her flagship program, Seed Seva, offers a multi-layered education on seed stewardship and Indigenous permaculture. The program is offered online, allowing anybody to access White’s wisdom. Additionally, Sierra Seeds offers a Seeding Change leadership incubator, where emerging food justice leaders meet virtually to support one another while developing individual projects.

25. Storying Kaitiakitanga (Oceania)
Storying Kaitiakitanga – A Kaupapa Māori Land and Water Food Story is a project of Dr. Jessica Hutchings and other Māori researchers and storytellers. The project was developed as part of the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge to collect the stories of Māori food producers across the food system. Storying Kaitiakitanga is exploring how traditional Māori principles and practices can inspire more sustainable food systems for the next generation. Stories include beekeepers, yogurt producers, and business development service providers.

26. Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation (North America)
The Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation (CDC) is a grassroots Lakota organization building food sovereignty on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota. Their reservation-wide Food Sovereignty Coalition is dedicated to reconstructing a healthy local food system. They have greatly increased food production on the reservation and train residents and students on Oglala food histories, current local foods, gardening, and food preservation.

27. Wangi Tangni (Central America)
In Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, the women of Indigenous Miskita communities receive native plants from Wangi Tangni to grow for food, medicine, and reforestation. The organization provides communal and legal support for women, many of whom do not speak Spanish. The organization’s overall mission is to promote political participation and gender equality through sustainable development projects such as indigenous plant rematriation.

28. Zuni Youth Enrichment Project (North America)
The public schools of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico and Arizona partner with the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project to build gardening spaces and provide nutrition education. The partnership is intended to reintroduce traditional knowledge and practices into students’ educations about food. The Project hopes that the community gardens will also inspire more Zuni to grow their own food and reduce rates of obesity and diabetes in their communities.

This story was originally published by Food Tank

Excerpt:

Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Danielle Nierenberg and Emily Payne
NEW ORLEANS, United States, Jul 10 2018 (IPS)

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, women make up about 43 percent of the agricultural labor force worldwide, and in some countries they make up 80 percent of all farmers. In addition to tending crops, most women—particularly in the Global South—are also responsible for seed saving, animal husbandry, grain processing, and other tasks related to growing food. This is in addition to cooking, cleaning, and taking care of sick elders and children.

It’s women farmers who produce the food that families eat. While male farmers often focus on growing commodity crops like maize, rice, and soybeans, women raise the fruits, vegetables, and small livestock that nourish families each day.

But if women had the same access to resources as men, they could raise their current yields by 20 to 30 percent—this would lift as many as 150 million people out of hunger. So when considering the global food system crisis, women should be at the top of mind.If women had the same access to resources as men, they could raise their current yields by 20 to 30 percent—this would lift as many as 150 million people out of hunger. So when considering the global food system crisis, women should be at the top of mind

Nourished Planet, a new book put forth by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, highlights stories of success through women’s efforts in agriculture throughout the world. Examples range from female PhD students from Jamaica developing workshops for small farmers on climate-adaptive irrigation strategies to women dairy farmers in Ghana starting a co-op to pay for their children’s healthcare and education.

The book goes on to highlight that, across the globe, women often have little agency over their own lives. They often lack the same access to resources—such as land, banking and financial services, education, and extension services—as male farmers. And in many countries, women aren’t allowed to own land or even inherit their land.

As farmers across the globe are aging, women need to be able to take their rightful role as leader of their land, farm, and family. The average age of the American farmer is 57 years old; in Africa, the average farmer is 60. When their husbands die, we need to ensure that the women of these households are able to maintain the land they have grown, cultivated, and lived on for often many generations.

Traditional power structures in the food system commonly ignore or undervalue the vital roles women play. Women need to be recognized for their part in feeding the world today, as well as empowered to grow their contributions into the future.

Credit: IPS

 

Across the globe, women are taking matters into their own hands by forming cooperatives and non-governmental organizations and innovating their way to a sustainable future.

The Women in Agriculture program in Nigeria is connecting women to vital extension services, and the Women Advancing Agriculture Initiative advocates for gender equality and access to information for women in Ghana. In America, the Women in Food & Ag Network is striving to create a global network to provide opportunities for education on economics and environment that promote a holistic view of agriculture.

Women farmers are letting governments, policymakers, and their own husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons know that we ignore women in the food system at our own peril.

A more economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and socially just food and agriculture system around the globe is within our reach. But it is an essential for farmers, eaters, businesses, policymakers, academics, funders, and anyone interested in contributing to a food system to value and support women to continue to grow our food, nourish our bodies and planet, and innovate to food system change.

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Credit: Bigstock

By Danielle Nierenberg and Emily Payne
NEW ORLEANS, United States, May 29 2018 (IPS)

Many factors contribute to the cost of a tomato. For example, what inputs were used (water, soil, fertilizer, pesticides, as well as machinery and/or labor) to grow it? What kind of energy and materials were used to process and package it? Or how much did transportation cost to get it to the shelf?

But that price doesn’t always reflect how the plant was grown—overuse and misuse of antibiotics, water pollution from pesticide runoff, or whether or not farm workers harvesting the tomatoes were paid a fair wage. It turns out cheap food often comes with an enormously expensive cost to human and planetary health.

Danielle Nierenberg

Agricultural production, from clearing forests to producing fertilizer to packaging foods, contributes 43 to 57 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). And almost 40 percent of all food that is produced is lost or wasted. As that food decomposes in landfills, it releases methane, which is 25-times more potent of a GHG than carbon dioxide—in fact, landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the U.S.

Often, today’s food systems are incentivized to favor low-cost, processed foods. Corporations and large-scale producers are often subsidized to grow select staple crops, which are typically grown in monocultures using practices that strip soils of nutrients. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that poor diets have produced a global public health crisis.

Six of the top eleven risk factors driving disease worldwide are diet-related, and the World Health Organization estimates the global direct costs of diabetes to be more than US$827 billion per year.

To feed 10 billion people by 2050, we need to start thinking of food production, health care, and climate change as interconnected. As the world’s population grows, so does the need for more resilient food and agricultural systems that address human need while minimizing environmental damage and further biodiversity loss.

Emily Payne

In a recent report by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture & Food (TEEBAgriFood), a new framework was developed to look at all the impacts of the value chain, from farm to fork to disposal. The framework hopes to give policymakers, researchers, and citizens more reliable information on the real and unaccounted for costs of our whole food system—not just parts of it.

This type of systems thinking supports a shift away from measuring the success of food production by metrics like yield per hectare, which fails to provide a complete picture of the true, often invisible costs of the entire system.

Changemakers across the globe are rising to this challenge and bringing sustainable and regenerative practices into the farming of the future. Recognizing that farming is in a period of transition, they are helping build a system that increases food production to meet a growing population while reducing harm on the environment and feeding those in need.

It’s now easier than ever to access resources and learn how our everyday decisions impact not just ourselves, but our environment and public health. The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition developing the Double Pyramid to help people make food choices which are both healthy for people and sustainable for the planet. And recognizing carbon footprints and water footprints allow individuals to better understand how deeply intertwined the food system and climate change are.

No one person or organization will be able to fix this food system. Businesses, policymakers, farmers, and, of course, eaters have a responsibility to help protect natural resources, improve social equity, and create a more sustainable food system through more informed decisions and responsible consumption.

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