There is a saying in Sinhala that a farmer, whose mud has been washed off, is suitable for kingship. Kingship aside - we now have a gentleman farmer, who is our president, a man who has never forgotten his roots deep in rural Sri Lanka.
Rural Sri Lanka is also where thousands of farmer women work side by side in empowering the agrarian sector of the country. After all, whether we like it or not, we remain an agricultural nation in which the bulk of the people still live off the land.
Farmer women
With a growing interest in sustainable living, people are increasingly becoming aware of t he pesticide menace that has virtually destroyed t he crops, although they were originally meant t o be otherwise.
As a result, you see more and more people flocking to ‘Good Market’ and other avenues where organic vegetables, fruits and rice can be bought.
Increasingly, traditional heirloom kinds of rice are harvested with good results. More often than not, farmer women, who are the very soul of the farming community, lend their hands to ensuring that crops are planted, nurtured and harvested right.
A leading website recently featured an inspiring story about one such farming woman who successfully manages over five acres of farming land – she was introduced as ‘Courageous Rani’, who has chosen to farm according to the traditional methods of farming, without the use of fertilizer; her crops include heirloom rice types.
She manages her paddy fields, the farm animals and the vegetable patch spreading over the five acres all on her own. A grandmother and a grand matriarch living in Hingurakgoda, Courageous Rani truly personifies the strength and sheer determination of Sri Lankan farmer women.
Small family farmers
When I read about Rani’s success, I honestly wished I could buy her produce; those of us who yearn for freshly grown organic vegetables and fruits and walk around Good Market in search of it weekly, understand the benefits of empowering farmer communities through direct purchase.
For Rani and women like her, creating a channel that would encourage and enable them to connect with the consumers in the city would be great.Last year was declared the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) by the United Nations, laying emphasis on the role of small family farmers all over the world in meeting the needs for global food supply.It is estimated that smallholder family farmers account for as much as four fifths of the food produced in the developing world, making them major contributors to global food security.
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN arm for global agricultural activities, has focused greatly on the role of women in empowering farmer communities all over the world.
Accordingly, October 15 is celebrated as the International Day of Rural Women, creating awareness of the role of rural women in augmenting agricultural and rural development and their efforts in minimizing rural poverty. It also highlights the issues faced by them.
IFAD believes that a greater investment is needed towards enhancing and empowering rural women and has in place activations that support them. IFAD is also developing methodologies that enable the farmer families all over the world in evolving sustainable livelihood strategies.
With a goal towards empowering both men and women in making joint decisions and distribution of workloads, IFAD believes such methodologies can result in critical changes in gender relations within households.
Lankan rural women
Rural women who form the core of agrarian societies such as ours handle a substantial work load in addition to their contribution on the fields. They handle daily chores such as cooking, cleaning, getting the children ready for school, looking after the elderly, gathering firewood and obtaining water, placing a greater emphasis on their roles.
They are often the closest work mate their husbands rely on for support in ensuring the fields are harvested. In North and East of Sri Lanka, where farmer communities have been affected by the war, women who head households also engage in farming activities without the help of a male relative, placing an added burden on their shoulders.
Food supply that is free from pesticides is critical for the future of all of us – too many of us are sick and will be sick as a result of the pesticides being used freely. Our future as a healthy nation lies in how able we are to enhance organic farming methods, resulting in safer, naturally grown food crops that make us healthy and not sick.
The rural farmer communities play a strategic role in ensuring that process takes place at a sustainable pace. It is no longer merely fashionable to buy organic - it is saving our very lives - and that’s why we should be focusing more on the women and men who are growing the food we eat.
