Women committed to feeding the nation

Despite inclement weather, limited resources and difficulties in breaking into the male dominated agricultural markets, Free State women are determined to become successful farmers and create jobs

Inclement weather, lack of storage facilities for products and limited access to land are some of the challenges that women with a quest to position themselves as credible players in agriculture have to deal with almost on a daily basis in the Free State.

These hamstrings came under the spotlight on Monday this week, when a parliamentary portfolio committee on agriculture undertook a tour of several farming initiatives, to take stock of the challenges facing emerging farmers in the province.

Some of the women, who are battling to overcome these constraints, are members of the Bloemspruit-based Sizakane Farming Co-operative.

The co-operative is made up of 15 residents of Bloemspruit who pulled together their resources to form a poultry co-operative. They were determined to shed the tag of community-based co-operatives being unsustainable undertakings.

They are all farmers and have been brought together by their common passion to make a living from poultry husbandry.

They approached the department of agriculture for technical assistance. The department bought into their vision and proposal, and promptly enrolled all of them on co-operative management and poultry production training. This move was designed to guarantee the co-operative’s survival and sustainability.

“We learnt that chickens need a good strong coop which should be locked up at night to protect them from the elements, predators and thieves. The department then went on to build each member a chicken enclosure, except one who does not have her own land,” co-operative chairperson Khauhelo Lebentlele told The Weekly earlier this year.

Lebentlele said they also learnt that chicks must be kept dry and warm, and that it is vital that chicks bond with their mothers (hens) and learn how to scavenge for food.

“We learnt that during the day the chicks should be given small amounts of finely crushed grain, bread, cooked or raw mealie-meal. Clean, fresh water should also be provided in a suitable container that is not big enough for chicks to fall inside. The chicks should not be allowed to get wet.”

The women appreciated the intervention of the agriculture department, which had built each member a state-of-the-art chicken hutch fully equipped with proper ventilation and lighting. These would come in handy for the chickens, especially in winter. They were particularly chaffed with the design of the coops, which they described as easy to maintain.

The women further disclosed that the department had also promised to supply each member of the co-op with 3 000 chickens in six instalments to establish their competence. They would also be getting vaccinations and chicken feed from the department.

Raring to go and brimming with confidence and optimism, the women revealed that the short term goal of the co-op is to open an abattoir and supply the entire Free State with meat.

But today, three months later, the women are telling a different story. The chicken pens have turned out to be frail structures, and they are blaming the service providers contracted by the department for the shoddy workmanship.

Masizake secretary, Mpeile Phalo, said the department told them it spent more than R3-million to build 14 chicken coops, but these have proved to be too small to accommodate their chickens, and are too cold.

“We received the chickens in the middle of winter. As a result, water and electricity (to heat the interior of the coops) is costing us a fortune. According to the initial agreement, the department had promised to give each member 1000, chicks but we only have received 500 each, plus small packets of medication that we don’t even know how to use.

“We have collectively received a total of 7 000 chicks from the department, but we are incurring serious losses because many chicks have died of the cold. Even if they do survive the cold, we pay R5 per chicken to be slaughtered at the abattoir because we are not allowed to slaughter at home for the health reasons. Electricity and water aren’t the only expenses we have. We also have to pay to transport the chickens to the abattoir.

“Then there is also the problem of storing the slaughtered chickens because we do not have a freezer big enough to store and preserve the chickens. And now, instead of selling the chickens in bulk to big businesses, we are forced to sell them individually to the ordinary people, and on credit for that matter. This means we go on to face yet another challenge of recovering the debts, because some customers default on payments. We need a proper market to sell our products and make enough turn over.”

For her part, Lebentlele – who is also into vegetable farming – also related the extent of the havoc wreaked by the weather.

“The cold Free State weather tops the list of factors that affect my business negatively. I make a lot more money in summer, from selling vegetables, but the extremely cold and dry winter makes it near impossible to successful complete my farming. I also need more land. I have a four-hectare field, which is not enough to grow all the vegetables I would like to grow.

“The other constraint is shortage or lack of cold storage facility as the market is rather unstable. It is particularly bad after bumper harvests. The sprinkler irrigation system is also a problem for me as it wastes a lot of water. I think switching to drip irrigation would be more beneficial in that we would conserve both water and (consequently) soil moisture,” added Lebentlele.

In spite of all these challenges, Lebentlele’s resolve to make it big as a farmer has not been dampened. She is still convinced that her projects will grow to a level that will see her export vegetables to neighbouring countries.

Rural women, agriculture and education

Rural women, who constitute one-fourth of the world’s population, continue to face more difficulty than men in accessing public services, social protection, employment and markets, due to cultural norms, security issues and lack of identification documents.

According to the United Nations, rural women account for a great proportion of the world’s agricultural labour force, produce the majority of food grown, especially in subsistence farming, and perform most of the unpaid care work in rural areas.

Agriculture provides a livelihood for 86 percent of rural women and men and employment for about 1.3-billion smallholder farmers and landless workers – 43 percent are women. Their rights and contributions have been largely overlooked to date.

The UN’s World Food Programme Gender Policy and Strategy have indicated that gender inequality is a major cause and effect of hunger and poverty, estimating that 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women and girls.

Facts and figures drawn from the inter-agency report, “Rural Women and the Millennium Development Goals”, show that men’s average wages are higher than women’s in both rural and urban areas.

Rural women typically work longer hours than men – they also have domestic and child care responsibilities. In Benin and Tanzania, women are said to work 17.4 and 14 hours more than men per week, respectively.

In some countries, the amount of time spent collecting water alone significantly impacts on women’s employment opportunities. In sub-Saharan Africa, women collectively spend about 40-billion hours a year collecting water.

If rural women had equal access to productive resources, agricultural yields could reduce the number of chronically hungry people by between 100 and 150-million. However, studies show persistent gaps that impact the lives of rural women.

Education remains another area in which more has to be done to help reduce the rate of illiteracy. Women make up more than two-thirds of the world’s 796-million illiterate people.

According to global statistics, just 39 percent of rural girls attend secondary school. This is far fewer than rural boys (45 percent), urban girls (59 percent) and urban boys (60 percent).

Staying in primary school alone means, every additional year increases girls’ eventual wages by 10-20 percent. It also encourages them to marry later and have fewer children, and leaves them less vulnerable to violence.

The UN indicated that progress has been made in reducing the gender gap in urban primary school enrolment, but data from 42 countries shows that rural girls are twice as likely as urban girls to be out of school.

In Egypt, Indonesia and several African countries, building local schools in rural communities increased girls’ enrolment.

Educating women would also mean that a large gender gap in their access to decision-making and leadership can be curtailed. Source: http://www.southafrica.info