On Friday May 3, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) welcomed the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (proposed by the United States of America and adopted by consensus) inviting the FAO, in collaboration with the other UN agencies, to facilitate the implementation and observance of the International Year of the Woman Farmer.
It took an embarrassingly long time coming, though now that that international organization has finally agreed to shine an institutionalized spotlight on women farmers, there can be no question than that it is a signal moment for global agriculture and a historic chapter in the acknowledgement of gender equality in one of the most important spheres of human activity, globally.
This, unquestionably, is a propitious moment for the agriculture sector, globally, a sector in which the records will show that women across the world have matched their male counterparts, stride for stride, in their contributions to agriculture, and by extension, to global food security. It is an opportunity to take recognition of women’s role in agriculture beyond the largely tokenistic boundaries that have obtained up to this time. Guyana, as much as any other country in any part of the world, has an obligation to roll out a landmark International Year of the Woman Farmer, one that will help to sharply underline the extent to which women continue to more than meaningfully contribute specifically to food security, and to the growth of the economy, as a whole.
Here in Guyana, women have long made a name for themselves in the agriculture and agro-processing sectors. Through these avenues, women have helped to build the country’s credentials as the regional front runner in the agriculture sector and a critical cog in the wheel of regional food security. Still, it has to be said that with the assignment of enhancing the bona fides of regional food security currently on our proverbial plate, there is now more than sufficient opportunity to ‘parade’ the credentials of women in the sector. Here, the Ministry of Agriculture, which is sometimes far too gingerly in its embracing and celebrating the milestones in the sector, must ensure that it begin, now, to parade the contributions that our women, over time, have made to causing the country’s agriculture sector to be what it is today.
It must go beyond the tokenism which, all too frequently, is applied as ‘celebration’ of gender-related milestones. It has to be said that for all the noise in the market, the salutary role that women have played in the growth and development of the country’s agriculture sector continues to be under-recognized and under-compensated. The FAO itself has, over time, done its own fair share to explore and promote the feminization of agriculture, focusing on critical areas in which the contribution of women has at least equaled that of men. Here in Guyana, and elsewhere across the world, that contribution has been significantly magnified by the fact that it has long been commonplace for women to be required to ‘double up’ as farmers and home makers. Whether here in Guyana this circumstance has been sufficiently recognized and compensated is by no means a matter that has been meaningfully ventilated at the level of the state. We can do worse than begin to take on board the fashioning of some means through which this reality can be meaningfully acknowledged and suitably compensated.
Contextually, the FAO’s 2022 publication, (The Status of Women in Agri-food Systems) provides insightful data on the subject of “recommendations for policy and decision-makers about gender in agri-food systems.” It goes further – “reviewing and analyzing women’s opportunities and constraints in economic and social processes, while taking stock and assessing progress made in closing a series of gender gaps.” Much has been said both here in Guyana, and globally, about what we expect will be the hopefully, never-to-be-forgotten footprint which women have left in terms of working alongside their male counterparts (and frequently on their own) to ensure the growth of the agriculture sector at a cost to health and lives in many instances. Embedded in the 2026 International Year of the Woman Farmer undertaking must be the fashioning of mechanisms through which these sacrifices can be meaningfully recognized and adequately compensated.
There can, one feels, be no question that the staging of an International Year of the Woman Farmer is a richly deserved reward for the historic contribution that women have made, globally, to the agriculture sector. One expects, therefore, that the Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Agriculture, will embrace and appropriately recognise the International Year of the Woman Farmer with initiatives that go beyond tokenism.
