Welcome to the Feminism & Agriculture Series

As you can see, the Feminism & Agriculture Series has begun.  Check in all day today and tomorrow to read powerful stories about women and their experiences with the land.

Why?

There’s a growing concern that certain agricultural practices can harmfully impact women. Whether they struggle to attain land of their own, navigate gender dynamics in food cultivation, or suffer from exposure to toxic chemicals, women are often the hardest hit by our abuse of the environment. Yet, women are just as often at the forefront of the fight for environmental change.

According to ActionAid, a nonprofit group that fights the causes of poverty around the world, less than 1 percent of the agriculture budget in some impoverished countries is targeted at women, even though these women grow a vast majority of the food. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, women do about 80 percent of the farm work. That means that any effort to improve the region’s agriculture or the lives of its small farmers should take women’s needs and roles into account. Despite efforts to address gender issues in agriculture, changing the lives of women farmers has remained unsuccessful in many countries.  More than that, agricultural research, which is usually performed by men, becomes less effective when women’s voices and priorities aren’t taken into account.

Throughout this series, readers will have the opportunity to hear stories from women who have had experiences on farms, in environmental policy classes and/or environmental organizations, and, more generally, who have health concerns due to exposure to chemicals (pesticides, hormones, plastics, etc) in our environment. In the stories that follow, women inspect what it means to be both a feminist and an environmentalist.

Each contributing writer sees herself as affected by our environmental practices and vocalizes calls for change, asks questions about our policies, or brings to light stories of women that need their voices heard in rural areas. Ranging in geographic location from Canada to Israel, New York to Tanzania, these stories describe how we can change our agricultural practices to better incorporate women’s perspectives and needs and/or why issues of gender must be addressed when we speak about the environment.

Welcome!

Feminism & Agriculture

Edited by Fiona Brown

Monday May 9, 2011

• “You Make Me Wanna Shout” by Julia Landau
• “Urban Homesteading” by Ben Silva & Sandra Faiman-Silva
• “What More Can We Do?” by Marie Anne Zammit
• “Gender Roles and Farming” by Ellen Carlisle
• “Poverty, Hunger, Landlessness and Women’s Bequeathed and Perpetual Marginalization” by Valerie Githinji
• “Agriculture in the Desert: Bedouin Women Entrepreneurs” by Roxanne Krystalli
• “Women Pave The Path Toward A Sustainable Future” by Yifat Susskind

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

• “Feminism in Agriculture” by Corinne Almquist
• “Women and Our Lawns” by Cheryl Shour
• “Transforming the Relationship between Personal Health and Food Choices” by Chelsey Jo Huisman
• “Women Producers on the African Shea Belt: Custodians of Traditional Knowledge” by Lesley Angela Wentworth
• “Gender Justice in Environmental Studies” by Angela Wallace
• “Sustain: A Photo Essay of Women and their Farms across America” by Aliza Eliazarov

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