Vert-à-Go

In further recognition of International Women’s Day, I’d like to cross-post something written by Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, on his blog back in October. His post was in response to the New York Times magazine’s special food issue, which dealt with many concerns surrounding food, food politics, and food security. He, along with Dan Moshenberg (a professor of Women’s Studies at Georgetown University) felt that the NYT had missed something pretty basic in all its many and varied discussions of food–women. They wrote a letter to the editor in response (it comes below, after Raj’s introduction).

The New York Times ran a special food-themed issue of its Sunday magazine a week back. It was kicked off by a fine piece by Mark Bittman, who observed quite rightly that the conversation being had in the magazine’s pages reflects America’s new, and healthy, interest in what they’re eating.

Indeed, just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine this sort of interest, and even harder to imagine that the New York Times would countenance the sorts of politics espoused in Michael Pollan’s Farmer in Chief essay, or David Reiff’s subtle dissection of the Gates Foundation’s African Adventures.

I like David’s piece a great deal, not just because I appear in it as a reasonable person, but because he captures exactly what’s wrong about the Northern do-gooder in Africa. For the record, a mistake crept in to the piece – I’ve never actually met Raj Shah – but the piece certainly captures how I feel about the Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa.

And yet, despite all that, the issue had one or two gaping holes. Labour didn’t really get a look in and, most important, the entire issue was almost wholly silent on the issue of gender. One doesn’t have to look far to see women food producers and food-makers taking on the inequities of the modern food system. Just today, from their meeting in Maputo, the women of Via Campesina released this declaration. And Dan Moshenberg, who sends much of the finest material to me for this blog, took the lead in writing this letter to the editor which, alas, the editor decided not to print.

Dear Editor,

The New York Times Magazine October 12th Food Issue is a measure of how far the debate around agriculture has come. A few years ago, it would have been inconceivable that Sunday’s glossy section could be devoted to a mosaic of pieces about the politics of food, from belly to bourse, from private purchases to public policy. We still, however, have far to go. One neglected element would have brought coherence to the disparate pieces: women.

Certainly, women were mentioned in the issue. Mark Bittman noted that cooking is no longer the exclusive purview, burden, or task of those called `housewives’. With women pressured or choosing to enter the waged labor force, men are encouraged or forced to cook for themselves and even, occasionally, for others. In her discussion of the ethical kashrut movement, Samantha M. Shapiro recalls the cultural and religious traditions of her own family, in which men would slaughter, skin and butcher animals, and women would purchase the meat, soak and salt it, and prepare it for the family. Michael Pollan urged the next President of the United States to expand the WIC program for low-income women with children.

There’s much to admire in, and much to debate over, these descriptions of women. But women are more than contemporary household cooks (since they are still a minority among paid chefs), more than the stories of how it was done in our family in the good old days, and more than the recipients of government handouts.

In much of the world, and in particular in the Global South, women are the primary toilers of the earth, even if they are a minuscule portion of the owners of land. For example, while women produce the majority of food consumed in the Global South, the OECD has noted that women own 1% of the land mass of Africa. If that seems a little far away, there are plenty of examples of women producing food closer to home - consider the fate of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a farmworker who died of heatstroke in May this year while harvesting grapes in California, the latest in a long line of women casualties in our modern food system.

Women aren’t only central to understanding how food is produced - it’s hard to tell the full story of food distribution and food consumption without them either. The food crisis discriminates against women - 60% of those going hungry are women and girls. Michael Pollan almost touched on this when he noted that in recent months more than 30 countries have experienced food riots which are, more often than not, protests that result from planned and coordinated action by women.

All of these stories, and the big story they add up to, is a story of women. Women farmers, women care providers, women wives, women mothers, women daughters, women aunts, women heads of households, women consumers, women workers, everywhere in the world. If food matters, as we certainly agree it does, then women must be accounted for because, when it comes to food, women count. Perhaps in the next food issue, the Times might move a little further to doing this particular piece of arithmetic.

Sincerely,
Dan Moshenberg
Raj Patel

“Women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world’s food production, yet their key role as food producers and providers and their critical contribution to household food security is only now becoming recognized.”

–Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Today, 8 March, is International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the social, political, and economic achievements of women. One of the big headlines today was how the recession is hitting women in developing countries. As the article states, “Seventy per cent of the poorest people on the planet are women and girls, and even in a wealthy country like Canada they are the majority of the poor.” Jobs in the traditionally female employment sectors (retail, restaurants, cleaning) are rapidly vanishing because of the economic downturn, and because women earn less than men even in good times (a 16% overall wage gap globally), they have fewer resources when things turn bad. This makes them (and their children) extremely vulnerable to rises in food prices and much more likely to fall victim to poverty, malnutrition, and starvation (not to mention abuse as they are forced to do whatever is necessary in order to earn money to buy food to survive).

The International Food Policy Research Institute has issued a number of fascinating reports (Women: the Key to Food Security, Helping Women Respond to the Global Food Price Crisis) outlining the special problems facing women as they deal with issues of food security and hunger. Here are a few of its findings:

1. Agricultural productivity increases dramatically when women get the same amount of inputs (such as educational, labour, fertiliser) that men get: one single year of primary school education caused women farmers to increase their maize production by 24%.
2. Women’s education and status within the household contribute more than 50 percent to the reduction of child malnutrition: an educated and respected woman has a much greater likelihood of raising a healthy child.
3. Good care practices can mitigate the effects of poverty and low maternal schooling on children’s nutrition: teaching uneducated women about how to feed and care for their children helped their children to achieve the same height and weight as those of more highly-educated mothers.
4. Women are at a disadvantage when food and nutrients are distributed within a household: women feed their children first and themselves second, which means they often go hungry and lack proper adult nutrients.

The IPRI recommended that a number of steps be taken to improve the situation: reform and monitor legal, social, and cultural institutions to improve the status of women, be innovative in the design of agricultural, food, and nutrition programs, and design projects to be more sensitive to the livelihoods of both men and women.

One brilliant example of what can be done: the international women’s human rights organisation MADRE runs a program for women farmers in the Sudan , who “face a triple crisis of poverty, environmental degradation, and armed conflict.” Their project provides these farmers with seeds and supplies, including donkeys and plows, as well as resources and technical assistance. You can donate to MADRE here.