How has Tanzanian pastoralists’ access to land changed recently?

There has been a lot of restriction of pastoralists to certain areas of land. There are several factors contributing to this increased restriction. But generally in Tanzania, large scale investment is increasing and this has a huge impact on pastoralists’ access to land. Most of the areas that investors are interested in (for conservation, wildlife management and hunting) happen to be pastoral areas.

When investors come in, most of them go through the government and there is rarely appropriate communication with pastoral communities to let them know what is happening. There is a lot of friction between the investors and pastoralist communities because by the time the government and an investor have come to an agreement, pastoralists have not had any opportunity to participate in the decisions that affect them.

What are the consequences of increased land rights restrictions for pastoralists?

In Loliondo, my home and where I work, we have several investors. Some have direct links with our communities and we find agreements together. But we also have problems with investors who come in through the government. For example we have had several struggles with a hunting company that has been in the area since 1992. In 2009 during a major drought, the company blocked access to a vital area for grazing and watering our livestock in the dry season. The company had backing from the government and the communities were left on their own. There was mass death of livestock as a result. We have had several of these type of problems across Tanzania.

Can you explain why women pastoralists have been most active in the recent struggles for land rights?

Women have to react because they are most impacted by each case of land grabbing. It is relatively easy for men to move to other areas to look for alternative forms of livelihood. But for women, who have five or six children to look after, how will they move and where will they go? Women have a strong attachment to their land. They ask: “where will our children live if we don’t speak out? If we don’t act, the men will not act on our behalf. They do not feel the same about the future of our children.”

We see that women come together, contribute the little they have and are prepared to go all the way to the national level. In Loliondo, the government wanted to create a 1500 km2 conservation reserve that would restrict pastoralists’ access to their village land. In 2013, it was the women who came out strongly to fight. They went all the way to speak to the Prime Minister and the national press.

In the villages, women also struggle to influence change in the traditional, all male, leadership structure. Women are taking steps to participate in decisions and hold local leaders accountable for their actions. For example, there are cases where male leaders of the village council accept bribes to give outsiders access to village land. In one such case in Simanjiro District, Manyara Region, a group of women occupied the village council office in order to have their land rights recognised. They slept for five nights on the ground until their claims were heard by the village council.

The women went all the way to speak to the Prime Minister and the national press

How do you support women to uphold their rights?

I am the gender coordinator for the Ujamaa Community Resource Team and I lead the women’s rights and leadership programme. In this programme we organise women’s leadership forums. The forums include training on empowerment, womens’ rights, land rights and traditional management practices. For example, we simplify laws such as the village land act so that women know their rights and can defend them.

A forum usually has 24 women participants with each woman representing a sub-village (administrative unit within a village). The women are elected by other women in their communities as they are responsible for sharing their lessons from the forum. Traditional leaders from the village council are also included in the forums. This is a way to show the broader community that pastoralist women have the capacity to lead and to promote acceptance of these type of changes.

As well as empowering women to have access and control over land, the challenge we face now is about economic empowerment. I hear a lot of women saying, “we have the knowledge, I know my rights and how to acquire a piece of land. But without the resources to support myself – I still have a challenge.” This is why, as an organisation, the Ujamma Community Resource Team also addresses economic empowerment. For example, in one community women have set up a cattle dip business which ensures they have their own income.

Why is it so important to support grassroots actions as well as advocate for land rights at the national level?

These two levels need to be connected because things happen at the top which affect people on the ground. We empower and consult at the grassroots level so that pastoralists are able to reach higher levels to claim what is rightfully theirs. The women’s rights and leadership forums is a good example. We also play a role when pastoralists are not aware or able to participate in decisions and discussions at the regional or national level.

For example, recently there was a land policy review conducted by the government. It took place in a very short space of time. We worked to ensure that if people at the village level could not attend the regional meetings arranged by the government, we could at least represent their issues at that platform.

Another example is the constitutional review due to be finalised in 2020. The government review team visits villages but they don’t take the responsibility of ensuring that all people are able to participate and they do not visit all the villages. Again, we work to make sure that people are aware that this is happening and that there is an opportunity to participate and have their voices heard.

If pastoralists have their land rights and economic independence, how different would Tanzania be?

It will be different when pastoralists have access to and control over their resources. Pastoralism in Tanzania will be seen as an official mode of livelihood. The government will give more weight to pastoralists. They will be recognised for their role in supporting the national economy and Tanzania’s daily food and basic needs.

Although we have a lot of struggles, there is a lot happening on the ground. And, it is the women who are coming out strongly and are fully prepared to forge the change we need.

Has your work inspired other communities and women under similar circumstances?

I don’t want to take credit for things that don’t link directly back to mine and colleagues’ work at the Ujamaa Community Resource Team. Generally though, our successful approach of working with traditional leaders to influence change is being used more widely now. In the Maasai pastoral system, and generally in pastoral systems in Tanzania, male traditional leaders make rules and regulations in the community. These same traditional leaders are very influential in the community and are able to bring about change. We work together with them, especially for acceptance of women as equal beings capable of engaging in community development. More and more communities and particularly women are engaging with the traditional leadership system to influence the changes they want to see in their communities.

Interview: Madeleine Florin (m.florin@ileia.org)

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Many innovations led by women are based on agroecological principles such as increasing diversity, using fewer pesticides, or building new relationships with consumers. Through small experiments women learn, get organised and strengthen their autonomy. They gain increasing recognition and visibility in their communities and increase their self-esteem. This positive spiral can culminate into much larger processes of emancipation at the regional, national or even international level.

This issue of Farming Matters, dedicated to women farmers and agricultural workers, shows a variety of experiences, each of them inspiring in their own way. Women’s struggles are about much more than maximising the yield of rice, maize or beans- they are about creativity, dignity and autonomy, and the well-being of their communities.

A brief historical perspective

Long before the term ‘agroecology’ became popular, and much longer before the term ‘climate smart agriculture’ was coined, women and men farmers around the world were practicing agroecological principles. Women were not only doing most of the work in family farming, they were also highly knowledgeable and skilful in their work. Whereas men tended to have the broad overview of their farm, women kept expert knowledge about the selection and storage of seeds; multi-cropping systems of grains, tubers, beans and vegetables; the food and medicinal value of wild plants; and the raising of small animals.

Since the 1970s, scientists, development agencies, NGOs and policymakers have been paying increasing attention to the roles of women in agriculture. But globally, female farmers still receive only 5% of all extension services while they do 75% of the work in agriculture and produce 75% of the world’s food. Rural women’s major stumbling block continues to be their lack of access to and control over land as we learn from an interview with four powerful women’s rights activists from Asia and Africa (page 22). According to IFAD, women only own around 2% of all titled land world wide. Increasingly, farmer access to seeds is also endangered, which is especially problematic for women. If the world is serious about addressing gender inequality, it is important that we continue to address such deeper political and cultural issues.

One family, different paths

A general assumption is that if only women knew more about new crops and technologies their productivity would increase up to 20–30 percent (FAO). The risk of this thinking is that it suggests that women only have to catch up with men to produce more. Several authors in this issue of Farming Matters present a different, more complex picture where women do not automatically strive to follow men’s strategies, but choose their own pathway in agriculture and in life.

While men tend to invest most of their time and energy in crops for sale, women differentiate risk by mixing food crops that have different growth periods and purposes. The case of women farmers in Kenya (see box) illustrates this well. There are a continuous choices made in each farm family. We often see men strive for higher yields, more income and integration into regional or global markets, promoted by agricultural policies and regulations, education and extension. At the same time, women work towards maintaining a buffer against all sorts of risk, providing nutritious food, securing a home base for the family, a healthy family labour force and maintaining biodiversity. Many families strive to reconcile these different needs, but this does not always happen without tension and conflict.

So, rather than asking ourselves how can women be integrated into industrial agriculture and global value chains, we should ask women farmers what type of agriculture they want, and why.

Why women choose an agroecological path

From the articles in this issue, various reasons emerge that explain why women choose agroecology and become drivers of change.

Women’s agro-eco-logic: Agroecological practices are normally inexpensive, simple and effective; there is a minimal dependence on external inputs. The yields may be higher but can also be lower than those in conventional agriculture. What counts more for women is the total benefit they derive: enough diverse and healthy food to feed the family, a decent net income, fodder to feed the animals, and improved soil health. This becomes clear from the work of peasant women in Mozambique (page 36).
Creativity and innovation: Beyond just being a common sense approach to agriculture, agroecology is a more rewarding way of farming. Women emphasise that agroecological practices open space for creative change in the production system, while fostering solidarity and increasing productivity. This can be seen in the story from Malaysia (page 27). Similarly, experiences in the Himalayas (page 38) show that in harsh circumstances of climate stress and male outmigration, women use their creative skills to drive positive change through agroecological innovation.
Gender logic and a body logic: The System of Rice Intensification, a set of practices rooted in agroecological principles, benefits women (page 26) It has led to a significant reduction in drudgery and improvement in the wellbeing of women rice farmers who earlier used to stand for long hours in dirty muddy water to transplant the rice. Such benefits are rarely reported; yet, they are likely to be crucial factors explaining the spreading of SRI so far and for further spread in future. This challenges the assumption that agroecology generally increases women’s workload, and that women are not interested in agroecology as a result.
Living in harmony with nature: For women, choosing the agroecological path is ultimately a choice for autonomy. Women explicitly choose to follow a pathway with nature, not against it. In Spain, women farmers point at ‘life’ as the central aspect of their feminist approaches to agroecology that have transformed the food system of the city (page 14). Women’s proximity to nature is neither romantic nor ideological, it just is.
From communities to movements: Women fight for their autonomy, yet, at the same time they are committed to living and working in harmony with their family and the community. Agroecology brings these worlds together. Experiences in Brazil (page 10) and Colombia (page 32) show how women become drivers of peaceful agroecological change in situations of conflict.

Cash crop models disregard women’s knowledge

Traditionally, in the Kenyan drylands, women were engaged in food cropping and men devoted their time to pastoralism. From the 80s onward, however, the introduction of cash cropping enticed men into agriculture. So while the men grow crops for sale, women choose to work with agroecological practices. They cultivate a range of food crops to ensure that basic food needs are covered. Women plant food crops with different growing lengths together in the same plot to protect against risks of climate variability. Women nurture soil fertility by integrating excess organic matter into the soil after weeding and harvesting, and they conserve biodiversity through careful selection and conservation of seeds. Without this, the shift of men to cash cropping would not have been possible. Land fertility would be depleted by the mono-cropping required for cash crops. In the case of too little or too much rain, monocultures will not survive.

This example shows that commercialisation models disregard the knowledge about agricultural sustainability and resilience that is intrinsic in women´s agricultural practices. By not taking their knowledge seriously, these models disregard women farmers themselves and their crucial importance for family farming and food security.

The text for this box was provided by Martina Angela Caretta (martina.angela.caretta@humangeo.su.se) based on work from her recent PhD thesis (Caretta, M.A. 2015. East African Hydropatriarchies: An analysis of changing waterscapes in smallholder irrigation farming. Stockholm University).

New opportunities

Policies at all levels can support women in reinforcing their agroecological strategies. Sabrina Nafisa Masinjila (page 41) indentifies three key areas which we wholeheartedly support: Ensuring that women farmers remain at the centre of localised seed production systems; supporting farmer-led extensions networks; and ensuring access to land.

At the global level there are various opportunities to ensure the adoption of such policies. To name a few: the 2014 International Year of Family Farming has put the role of women in family farming firmly on the political agenda and an IYFF+10 process must ensure this translates into concrete commitments to support rural women.

The International Declaration on Agroecology drafted by global social movements recognised that women provide a principal social base of agroecology. This was presented at three regional seminars on agroecology organised by FAO in 2015 and needs to be followed up by governments in 2016.

Finally, the Sustainable Development Goals, recently launched by the United Nations, explicitly state the need to transform our food systems and to invest in critical agents of change, including rural women. Now is the time to utilise these and other policy arenas to implement grassroots policy proposals based on a wealth of practical experiences with women-led agroecology.

Women keep the farm and family going in times or crisis. Women hold the future – and agroecology can help them get there.

Edith van Walsum
Edith van Walsum is the director of ILEIA, the Centre for Learning on Sustainable Agriculture in Wageningen, the Netherlands.

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Young men from even the remotest places in the Himalayan mountains are leaving their homes in search of income opportunities elsewhere. This trend of out-migration has been driven by increased mobility and access to information, in combination with the effects of climate change, including both increased flooding and drought. Drought and erratic rain hamper rain-fed farming in the region. Floods destroy cultivated fields by sand-casting, sweeping away seed and food stocks and killing livestock. Families do not see agricultural investments as viable anymore and for farmers who mostly have agricultural skills the best option seems to migrate. When men leave, they abandon the farms and lose interest in agriculture while their families stay behind. Women are therefore faced with challenges to produce food without the labour of their husbands. This case illustrates the innovative capacity of women, not only to adapt to changing circumstances, but also to drive positive social change through agroecology.

Traditionally both women and men shaped the way farming was done in the Himalayas. The male household heads would choose the cash crops, the livestock  and also decide on innovations. Women would make decisions about farming for household consumption such as the home gardens and small livestock. Women are not allowed to plough but do other work such as planting, weeding or firewood and fodder collection.

Navigating environmental stress

Out-migration of men challenges women to get tasks done that are traditionally for men, such as ploughing. Remittances are often not enough to enable the women to hire labourers and compensate the lack of labour on the farm. Many engage in share-cropping arrangements, while others abandon the land and try to find alternative jobs so that they can buy their staple foods. In very rare cases in Nepal, women who trespassed cultural boundaries, have learnt how to plough and were seen on their fields behind their two oxen.

In addition to the increased workload for women in the absence of men, women have to deal with climate change related disasters for which they are often unprepared. This is harder for them since women do not have the same access as men do to markets, extension services or alternative livelihood options that could help them respond to climate stress. Their access is restricted by  limited mobility and other cultural constraints. Recent field research produced interesting examples from the region that showed how under environmental stress women who live in villages that suffer from male outmigration develop new farming practices, push alternative economies and create niche markets. Here are three examples from India, Nepal and China.

Sharing resources in Assam, Northeast India

In the district Tinsukia, at the river bank of the Brahmaputra River in India, annual floods regularly damage agricultural crops. The farmers managed to adapt to the floods with diversification in crops and livestock as well as sharecropping arrangements. However, in 2012 a big flood caused colossal damage to infrastructure, livestock and crop and  agricultural land. Many of the households that reported sand casting on their farmland assessed that they would not be able to cultivate the affected land for the next two to five years.

Women’s response to the flood was a system called bhagi, which included sharing of small livestock, handicraft skills and land by engaging in sharecropping.  For example, one family borrowed a pair of chicken from their neighbours and took the responsibility of their daily care on the condition that when young chicks were born, they would be divided equally between the lending and borrowing families. Women also initiated other forms of bartering such as exchanging their weaving skills in exchange for material. Women pushed their families to engage in share-cropping arrangements, where the land owning family invests in all external inputs including tractor, seed, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation while the working family puts in labour. The harvest is then shared equally between the two families.

In this way women relieved themselves of some additional responsibility and workload that came with the floods and still ensured good care of their families. In migrant households, where remittances are not enough to compensate for the lack of labour on the farm, such arrangements became extremely important.

Switching to fruit trees in Central Nepal

In Kavre District in Nepal where outmigration of men is high and rain patterns are erratic, farmers founded cooperatives to facilitate organic vegetable production and rain water harvesting. This was supported by the Appropriate Agriculture Alternatives training centre. The produce was bought at fixed rates and sold in Kathmandu markets.

However, because of an increased number of households without a male household head , the training centre extended its activities to promoting fruit and nut trees such as almond or macademia which need less water than vegetables. It was accompanied by trainings in biointensive farming, extension work with local communities and research with regard to new varieties that could suit the Nepali context.

Several women were interested in growing fruit trees to increase their income and secure their livelihoods because of fluctuating remittances from their husbands or sons. However, there were two major obstacles. First, the initial investment into trees is high and it takes several years before income can be achieved. Second, some elderly in the area believe that trees should not be transplanted from one place to another. This is a cultural and social barrier to innovation.  However, a couple of the families managed to convince their elders and are now trying out the tree varieties as a new income source that helps them to ensure their food security in an unfavourable climate.

Growing herbs in Yunnan Province, China

Towards the other side of the Himalayas, in the Yunnan Province of China, drought is a major problem for the farmers. In the small village of Weng Mu, a few hours North of Kunming, which is dominated by the Yi, one of the many ethnic minorities of the province, drought hampered the rain-fed crop production of wheat, maize and potato. Several elderly women, encouraged by an emerging small-scale processing industry of medicinal herbs, began planting of maka (Lepidium meyenii) as a new livelihood source. It is used for culinary and medicinal purposes enhancing energy, stamina and fertility.

They have been cultivating maka for 2-3 years now and in some cases up to half of their land is occupied with the medicinal plant, which not only gets them a good market price, but needs little care and is more resistant to water stress.  The women  use seed from small scale seed saving and exchange initiatives in the area. Despite the higher dependency on markets, they are proud that they triggered the changes in farming and are able to support their families.

Women as innate innovators

These examples show successful experiences of women coping with climate stress and outmigration of men, at the same time improving their autonomy, ensuring their food security and reducing hard labour. They do not only show that women are able to develop successful coping strategies but it also becomes clear that women are innate innovators. Gender roles are changing as part of the social transformation in the region. Women start experimenting and try out new ways of farming when pushed to the wall in the context of environmental stress and migration. These innovations sometimes require breaking though cultural barriers as in the case from Nepal.

For the most part, however, women have not gained much with respect to power relations. Decisions on farm management, field and cash crops or livestock are still mostly taken by men (be it from a distance or by male relatives). These decisions are often based on economic considerations only, while women tend to take into account social, cultural, nutritional and other factors in their decisions. However it appears that the more gender roles change, the more can women utilise new spaces and opportunities, become innovators and overcome challenges step by step.

Sarah Marie Nischalke
Sarah Marie Nischalke is Senior Researcher at the Center for Development Research, Bonn, Germany. The research on which this article is based was conducted as part of her former position in the Himalayan Climate Change Adaptation Program at the International Center of Integrated Mountain Development (snischal@uni-bonn.de).

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Why is agroecology especially important for women?

Saro: Women in Asia are, in most cases, the farmers. But more than that, they are concerned about the nutrition of their families. There are actually more women interested in the models of agriculture that support diversity and nutrition. There are many cases of women who are fighting for land, particularly farmers. Once they get the land, they move to agroecology. So that’s why land struggles are central in our agroecology movements in for example the Philippines and India.

How do women’s struggles for land relate to agroecology?

Saro: Getting land is really the priority for peasant women’s movements right now. We have a campaign called ‘No land, No Life’. In the last few decades women have organised themselves to call for land titles in their name, or joint titles in both their and their partners’ names. Often it is easier for the women to control the production on the ground when the land belongs to them. Once they get the land, they want to make use of it in the most profitable way. Experience shows that if they go back to the industrial agriculture they actually can’t survive—the costs of the inputs are too high. So they choose agroecology. As they realise that they cannot do this type of agriculture alone, they have also moved towards collective ownership and collective farming.

What is the situation of female plantation workers?

Loges: Tamil plantation workers in Sri Lanka are among the most oppressed groups in the world. Under British rule there was a big caste problem. Tamil people were slaves in Sri Lanka, because Sri Lankan people didn’t want to work as labourers. Until as recent as 2004, Tamil people were stateless; they had no rights to own land. Women workers do most of the tea plucking on the plantations and they are get a very small wage. But when they have their own land, they can cultivate whatever vegetables they choose and maybe sell them. They need to work hard on their plot for a little bit of money. But it strengthens them. It means they have some money to do something, to educate their children, for example. Only when women have land do they gain leverage in their struggles for other rights; it provides some kind of empowerment. Having land also means they can save their children from pesticides, because the pesticide levels are high in the tea plantations. So the right to land is connected to the right to life.

What is the attitude of your government?

Gracie: Let me tell you a recent story from the Dalit women in India, another very marginalised group. We have been fighting with the government for 6 or 7 years, continuously struggling to get land titles. After the women finally got the land, the agricultural development officer gave them false titles. A government officer told them: “If you want the real titles, I want one of your woman for sex”. But our women, together, told him: “Okay, come to our village and we will give you one woman.” When the officer came to their village, very interested, he chose one woman. He went inside a room to wait for her, and closed the door. All the women together took their brooms and went in and beat the officer. He was so surprised that he ran away yelling: “Please, sorry, don’t beat me, I am very sorry, if you let me get away I will give you the real titles!” And after only two or three days he gave them the true titles. This was great. But the land they got was very hilly, full of stones and difficult to work. The women decided that by working together they got land, so by working together they would also clear it. Now they are cultivating the land together, using agroecology, making compost and earning some money.

What actions can support women in agroecology?

Maimouna: We need to strengthen the women’s movement. In Senegal, for example, we have only one network of female farmers. Our challenge is now to make alliances and expand this network across Senegal and to other countries in region. We need to do more advocacy work with our local government and authorities for women farmers to have access to land. We must help women who do have land to learn about other ways to manage pests. Pesticides are so harmful to women, their children and their land, and agroecology offers them a way out of this devastating cycle.

Saro: We need to have more campaigns, more documentation of successes and struggles. We need more people to support the assertion of our rights over land; to know that this is very important. This is our life. Without land we don’t have production, we don’t have a livelihood. We need land to survive and to use our skills in agroecological production.

Has the situation improved for women in Asia and Africa over the last 10 years?

Saro: A lot more organising is taking place among women. They know the land is their life and if they lose that, they lose everything. A lot of local groups have made it a point to raise awareness and work on capacity building, and women are more open to the idea of fighting for their rights. The communities that are now threatened by land grabbing, for example, saw how other communities lost their land due to the expansion of oil plantations in the 80s ad 90s. So they say “okay we need to organise ourselves” and they ask civil society organisations and community based organisations to support them.

Gracie: Before, only men were recognised as farmers in the communities, but now women are also seen as farmers. Before, the government did not allow women farmers to have land. But now they are working with officials to get land titles in their names and to register their land for agriculture cooperatives. That is a very big improvement.

Maimouna: Ten years ago in Senegal we didn’t have rural women represented in parliament and other councils. But now a women farmer leader was selected to be on the national economic and environmental council. She is the president of a national network of rural farmers and that is a real change for rural women in Senegal.

Loges: In Sri Lanka 10 years ago, they did not talk about plantation issues in national platforms, much less about women. Now they are, and as organised groups we speak about our problems in many platforms. This means others recognise us and our issues. We work with farmers and simultaneously, we work with the political parties. The truth is: wherever the space, as women we need to go and fight for our rights.

Interview: Jessica Milgroom

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