Women Farmers Feed the World

Christa Hillstrom
YES! Magazine / Interview
Published: Sunday 23 October 2011
Fatou Batta: “In West Africa, women’s resistance to the new Green Revolution shows that the question of agricultural sustainability is also a question of equality.”
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It's harvest season in Burkina Faso. Throughout the West African nation's rural regions, small farmers—mostly women—are harvesting millet, rice, and sorghum to feed large families. After a full day harvesting grains, each wife will continue the work, tending her own small garden to feed her children.







The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), sponsored by the U.N. and published in 2009, found that the adoption of agrochemicals and monocropping, among other Green Revolution technologies, have harmed not only the land, but local communities and economies, benefiting transnational corporations with "near-total control" of food production.

Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, lead author of the IAASTD report, emphasizes instead the importance of agroecological farming, an approach that supports localized farming and draws on traditional knowledge. It not only considers productivity, sustainability, and resilience, but also equity.


Fatou Batta works with Groundswell International, an organization that partners with small-farmer groups across the world, including in Burkina Faso. She's working with a broad, grassroots alliance to show that small farmers‚ and especially women, can feed the world if we give them the resources to control their food, and the proper access to eat and sell it.

 Christa Hillstrom: Let’s talk about this idea of food sovereignty. How people in West Africa understand this concept?




Christa Hillstrom: Could you give an idea of what it’s like to be a woman farmer in West Africa?




Seasons of Hunger

Christa Hillstrom: You talked about the lean season, when women must often forage to feed their children because stores from the harvest have run out.




Traditionally, farmers control their own seeds—and share them. Women are the keepers of those seeds. But with AGRA, all of this is going to be out of the farmers’ control. This is why we are doing this whole campaign, saying, “We are the solution.” The solution cannot come from elsewhere. It’s already there.


Fatou Batta: First of all, it’s not yet evident the new seed will produce. It’s dependent on fertilizer, pesticide, and new technologies. Plus, here people rely on the rainfall—there is no irrigation. If you cannot control the water, what will happen if you apply the chemical fertilizer and then there is no rain? You could lose everything. So even if these new seeds can double the yield, there are some necessary environmental conditions that are not always met.

Plus there’s the cost. Most small farmers cannot afford chemical fertilizers and pesticides because it’s very expensive. But farmers have a way of selecting traditional seeds to see which ones are really performing, knowledge that has come down through generations. They do their own selection of what seeds are really good for what context and what seeds can be resilient to drought.

So we all agree that its important to increase productivity, but there are some necessary conditions to make it environmentally sustainable.

Seed Money

Christa Hillstrom: Seems like seeds are much more than just tools for food production. What role do seeds play in culture?

Fatou Batta: Women are those who store the seeds and can protect traditional seeds. If you take their seeds, it’s like you’re taking their soul away. Whatever improved seed you give them, they will still keep the traditional seed because it reflects their culture. They don’t want to get rid of it. Under the Green Revolution, it’s something that might no longer exist.


Fatou Batta: Yes, it kills something. In terms of culture, it kills something. In terms of local knowledge, it kills something. Putting farmers in debt because they depend on a corporation, in our culture, is like you lie down on the mat of someone. That’s a cultural image. If you don’t have control of your life, it’s like you are lying on someone’s mat and at any moment you can be thrown away.

Christa Hillstrom: You’ve said that women who are illiterate may feel like they don’t have much to teach, but these are also the women with the traditional knowledge and farming experience that we’ll need in coming times. What’s an example of that knowledge?



What we’ve observed happening now is that through all this technology imported with the Green Revolution, large areas of land are being converted to cash cropping. They cut down the trees and destroy vegetation. This means that women are losing their back-up sources of income and food. Some of the species don’t exist anymore in some parts of the country.

An Alliance for a Farmers’ Revolution in Africa



Christa Hillstrom: Sounds like “We are the Solution” could be a transformative campaign, if it can survive what it’s up against. What sort of support do you need to give the small farmer movement a real shot at flourishing?

Fatou Batta: I think it requires alliances—getting together and developing advocacy and also making pressure on our leaders. We need to say it’s important to invest more in sustainable technologies. Because of the activists nowadays, the debate is happening within the farmer network, and they’re trying to hold our leaders accountable.







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ABOUT Christa Hillstrom

Christa is web managing editor atYES!

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4 comments on "Women Farmers Feed the World"

Philip Torrance

October 25, 2011 11:03pm

. the one thing they need is water;
isn't the solar technology getting cheap enough
that it could pump sea water to basins
where it would produce more rainfall down wind?
. if that doesn't work,
isn't there enough solar energy to even do desalination ?

Sandra Streifel

October 24, 2011 10:04pm

Agricultural development with these industrial ag. methods in India and S America have uniformly led to small farms being consolidated into monocultural plantations of corporations or local landlords' large "modern" farms.

Sieglinde Proctor

October 23, 2011 5:17pm

Good article. There must be a push back to the Monsanto type companies who are trying to control the world's food supply with the argument that it will feed people better. It will only enslave farmers, who must go back to the company each year for new seeds, as the plants are genetically modified to produce barren seeds, and they will not grow. It is intentional world control of the food growing and it dictates who will eat. Can't afford new seed? Too bad. Seed banks with their heirloom varieties are the only option to guaranteed food supply for our future. More and more GMO's are getting patents, on different varieties of crops each year. It is a cancer, and everyone should inform themselves of the evil nature of Monsanto and other huge corporations racing to control the world through food.

Lawrence Neal

October 23, 2011 1:52pm

Someone better warn them about Monsanto and GMO... AGRA is just looking to enslave them.