5th World Conference of Science Journalists

 Spreading science through societies by reaching women and children [90:59m]: Download

PRODUCER: Cathy Reade

CHAIR: Rosemary Okello-Orlale

SPEAKERS: Annmaree O’Keeffe, Jacqueline Ashby, Subbiah Arunachalam

SESSION REPORT: Empowering rural women farmers with science—key to achieving food security

by Imelda V. Abano

In many parts of the world, it is the women who are responsible for food security, yet rural women farmers have little access to the benefits of research and innovation, said Jacqueline Ashby, a development sociologist and presently the Director of the Rural Innovation Institute at the Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia.

Professor Ashby said that 80 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion poor depend on agriculture for their survival and that rural women in developing countries play critical roles in guaranteeing food security and well-being for the entire community.

“Empowering women in most developing countries with science is key to achieving food security. We should communicate with them on what new plant varieties and new technology is being developed in order for them to improve their crop production,” Prof. Ashby said.

To help the rural women farmers in the developing countries, Prof. Ashby said that a new strategy is now being introduced — the participatory plant breeding (PPB).

PPB has been proposed as a way to address three problems of conventional plant breeding, namely its low effectiveness in marginal environments, the long time needed to develop a variety and the poor level of adoption, particularly in developing countries.

“Although it is difficult to introduce this new technology to women farmers in the developing countries we are determined to help them and so we partner with several organizations,” she said.

There are currently more than 80 programs worldwide using PPB in a number of different countries and crops. These countries are in Syria, Jordan, Eritrea and Egypt on barley, durum wheat, bread wheat, lentil and chickpea. The first varieties identified through PPB are already in farmers’ fields in Syria, Egypt, Eritrea and Yemen. Other countries such as Jordan and Eritrea are increasingly using PPB as their national breeding strategy.