IMAGINE6

I see women as producers, gatekeepers, and shock absorbers!

Meeting world food needs in the year 2020 will depend even more than it does now on the capabilities and resources of women. Women are responsible for generating food security for their families in many developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Women not only process, purchase, and prepare food, but they also play significant role in national agricultural production, producing both food and cash crops. Population growth, urbanization, and the limited potential for increasing production through the expansion of cultivated area imply that, for food needs to be met in the future, yields will have to increase. In my opinion women will play the key role in maintaining the three pillars of food security/ food production, food access and food utilization.

Women are major contributors to agriculture and play a prime role in ensuring the food security and nutrition status of their household members. Yet women could achieve much more in food production, provision, and utilization if agricultural researchers, plant scientists, extension agents, and policymakers would level the agricultural playing field. Women face an uphill struggle as a result of weak land tenure rights; exclusion from an active role in seed development and selection; neglect by agricultural extension services; and barriers to access to complementary inputs such as fertilizer, improved seeds, and credits. These impediments are likely to result in forgone economic growth through lower crop yields, delayed adoption of new technology and plant varieties, and environmental degradation.

Reductions in asymmetries between men and women in access to agricultural and other resources, the use of women's expertise in the early evaluation of new technologies, and the development of technologies that relive women's time constraints are essential if the three pillars of household and national food security are to be strengthened by the year 2020!