FOOD FOR EMPOWERMENTPowerful Beginnings to a Sustainable Future Through Empowering Women in Agriculture

Madelyn Radel

Introduction

The majority of agriculture conducted in the United States of America is unsustainable. And when seeking solutions, the literature tends to emphasize agriculture’s impacts on the environment and in turn, economics, while largely ignoring the importance of socializing agriculture to solve its unsustainability. By emphasizing the

social pillar of agriculture, and using women

as a model, we can imagine what sustainable

agriculture could look like in America.

Background

Despite recent efforts toward environmental and economic sustainability, the American agricultural system we know today fails to deliver a sustainable system in each of these aspects, in addition to failing to feed its people.

American agriculture is intensive, male-

dominated, and fails to feed its people.

• Relies heavily on chemical inputs and heavily degrades land.

• The dominance of masculinity has caused the erosion of personal knowledge and experience in agriculture.

• More than 37 million people in the U.S. are victims of hunger (feedingamerica.org).

Women and Sustainability

• Women are the minority of farmers but are influential as they understand the social pillar of agriculture and utilize it to create a more sustainable system.

• Women have historically led sustainable agriculture movements in America.

Figure A: The three pillars of sustainability. This paper focuses on the social pillar as it is largely ignored in other

literature on sustainable agriculture.

Methods

In researching for this paper, I sought out literature that synthesized multiple disciplines and views of sustainable agriculture. Additionally, I extensivelyreviewed the U.S. Census of Agriculture 2012 and 2017.

Potential for Empowerment

It is an unfortunate reality that the United States has fallen far behind other countries in the “developed” world—like the United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway—when it comes to gender equality (WEF, 2017).

However, women in agriculture find inspiration and empowerment through their sustainable agriculture organizations (Hassanein, 1997).

Women in Campania Italy as a Model

In the Campania region of Italy: women farmers emphasize multi-functionality in agriculture and are able to integrate themselves into the community and “build social ties” (Zirham and Palomba, 2015), they lay the foundation for the short supply chain (Figure C) and naturally produce it as a product of their agriculture. This empowers the women in the community and can serve as a model for the U.S.

Conclusion

It is abundantly clear that women in agriculture provide an important model for sustainable agriculture, one that emphasizes information acquisition and dissemination, and that socializes agriculture, making it about more.

• In order to bring our country’s agricultural system back to a system that works with the land and not against it, we must continue emphasize knowledge acquired by farmers, for farmers.

• Women in sustainable agriculture are already doing this by emphasizing personal experience and then spreading this knowledge with others through sustainable farming networks.

Through all of this, women present a way for the United States to increase their gender equality and empower women in a field that has historically ignored them.

References1. Allen, P., & Sachs, C. (2012). Women and food chains: The

gendered politics of food. Taking food public: Redefining foodways in a changing world, 23-40.

2. Barbercheck, M., Brasier, K., Kiernan, N. E., Sachs, C., & Trauger, A. (2014). Use of conservation practices by women farmers in the Northeastern United States.

3. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 29(1), 65-82. 4. Facts About Hunger and Poverty in America. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/facts. 5. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2012).

The Female Face of Farming. 6. Hassanein, N. (1997). Networking knowledge in the sustainable

agriculture movement: Some implications of the gender dimension. Society & Natural Resources, 10(3), 251-257.

7. Karami, E., & Keshavarz, M. (2010). Sociology of sustainable agriculture. In Sociology, organic farming, climate change and soil science (pp. 19-40). Springer, Dordrecht.

8. Peter, G., Bell, M. M., Jarnagin, S., & Bauer, D. (2000). Coming back across the fence: Masculinity and the transition to sustainable agriculture. Rural sociology, 65(2), 215-233.

9. Sumner, J. (2005). " Small is Beautiful": The Responses of Women Organic Farmers to the Crisis in Agriculture. Canadian Woman Studies, 24(4).

10. U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (2017). Census of

11. Agriculture. Retrieved from 12. U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics

Service (2012). Census of Agriculture. 13. World Economic Forum (2017). The Global Gender Gap Report

2017. 14. Zirham, M., & Palomba, R. (2016). Female agriculture in the short

food supply chain: a new path towards the sustainability empowerment. Agriculture and agricultural science procedia, 8, 372-377.

Environment and SustainabilityCollege of Arts and Sciencesbuffalo.edu

Information Dissemination and Women Organizations

Women in sustainable agriculture make farmer about “more,” socializing the experience, and forming organizations to spread information.

Information Dissemination

A. “Women see farming not only as a way to make a living, but also as a means of connecting with customers and sharing with them the values and lifestyles involved in alternative agriculture.” (Sumner, 2005)

B. Information dissemination is crucial for sustainable agriculture as farmers are practicing “an alternative way of life” and thus they have to “think, feel and act differently than conventional farmers in order to survive” (Sumner, 2005).

Social

EconomicEnvironmental

Figure C: Illustrates the sustainable, short supply chain that women farmers in Italy have created.

Local farmers markets

Short Supply Chain

'pick your produce’ boxes

farm tours & education

customers

Figure B: From an article entitled “Female Farmers are Coming into Their Own—and Networking is Key to Their

Success” which underscores the importance of organization formation.

Women Organizations (Figure B)

A. Women are well represented in sustainable agriculture organizations, many of which they created themselves with the purpose of being by women and for women (Barbercheck et al., 2012; Allen and Sachs, 2007).

B. Women farmers, because they are a minority in the field, have had to create sustainable agriculture organizations that address their specific needs (Hassanein, 1997)

C. These organizations re-emphasize the importance of personal experience and information dissemination and are correlated with environmentally-sound practices.