wfn.org | Women Farmers Speak in Rome

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3309 notes).

Note 3308 by UMNS on Nov. 26, 1996 at 15:53 Eastern (11544 characters).

SEARCH:   Food, women, farmers, rural, FAO
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT:  Joretta Purdue                  594(10-23-24-71BP){3308}
          Washington, D.C.  (202) 546-8722           Nov. 26, 1996

NOTE: Photos of both women available soon.

Women farmers voice grave concerns
about food production, trade, rural life

                        A UMNS News Feature
                        by Joretta Purdue*

     When 35 women farmers gathered in Rome, Italy, to talk about
food and rural life issues, two United Methodists from the United
States were active participants.
     As a member of the planning committee, Denise O'Brien from
near Atlantic, Iowa, was one of the leaders at the Nov. 6-9 Rural
Women's Workshop. For Mattie Mack, whose family farm is located
between Louisville and Fort Knox in Kentucky, this was her first
international conference.
     Both brought home vivid memories of the women sharing
information about their lives and cultures, and trying to be heard
about vital policy concerns related to food production.
     The workshop preceded the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)
Forum, which began before and ran during the world food summit
sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization, headquartered
in Rome.
     Working with simultaneous translation in Spanish, French and
English plus some additional one-on-one interpretation for a few
participants, the Rural Women's Workshop expressed their
apprehensions about the food summit by creating a statement
addressed to the NGO forum. The forum, in turn, worked on a
position statement to the summit.
     As farm women, who as a group produce at least half the
world's food, workshop participants protested that women were
being denied participation in the summit.
     "Nutritionally sound and safe food is a necessity of life,
and production of food is a way of life," said the statement
signed by 35 women food producers from every region of the Earth.
     The women complained that policies put in place by the first
World Food Summit in 1974 and as a result of more recent free
trade agreements have caused food shortages, introduced poisonous
chemicals, destroyed biodiversity and depleted the fertility of
soil by forcing repeated production of a single crop.
     "We have lost our land to agribusiness, urbanization and
industrialization through arbitrary and undemocratic legislation,"
they declared. 
     A policy to ensure food security, they said, would include
democratization of access to land, water, seed and intellectual
property; promotion of sustainable agriculture; establishment of
people-based trade systems; and empowerment of women in decision-
making bodies at all levels, from local to global.
     The statement also advocated access to education for girls
and women; access to credit for women; and health, education,
recreation, childcare and other support systems for both genders,
designed by and for rural communities. 
     O'Brien said women farmers bear a triple burden: they produce
food, do the work of the household and care for children and the
elderly. Yet, they are "shadowed in invisibility," she said.
     She recalled meeting a woman from Africa who is farming and
caring for her husband who had a stroke two years ago. Although
the husband has created a will leaving his land to her, she
expects his brothers to claim it at his death and believes they
will prevail because of long-held customs denying women ownership
of land.
     O'Brien also related the experience of Philippine women. The
pressure for export income to reduce national debt there has led
the government to encourage farmers to grow flowers for Japan. As
a result, the Philippines is not growing enough rice for its
people. The doubling in price of available supplies has been
accompanied by long waits in line, where some are inevitably
turned away empty-handed because the supply is exhausted.
     Raising one crop over and over without rotating "increases
the dependence on pesticides and fertilizers that are harmful,"
O'Brien said.
     "In Iowa our water is undrinkable ... because of the
contamination from the herbicides, pesticides and ammonium
fertilizers," she explained, adding that community water systems
filter those chemicals out, but such filtration often is
unavailable in other countries.
     O'Brien said she has concluded that the concentration of
wealth is in fewer and fewer hands. "Fewer people have access to
the resources to have a productive life," she said.
     In many ways Denise O'Brien, her family and farm, are typical
of the agricultural families across the country as they try to
contend with the changes happening at computer-like speeds. 
     The children are teen-agers, busy with school and other
activities. When the children were younger, both parents worked
the land and milked cows morning and evening, seven days a week.
Now, O'Brien's husband is employed off the farm, and O'Brien is
the farmer in the family. 
     In place of the dairy operation, O'Brien's efforts focus on
organically grown fruits and berries and poultry. In addition, she
produces a variety of handcrafted items such as wreaths.
     She is a also a self-described activist, taking a vigorous
role in national and international gatherings such as these. She
was one of the speakers at the Dialogue of Women Farmers with
Policy-Makers and NGOs, held in a large airplane hangar Nov. 14.
     Not only were the women denied access to both the NGO Forum
and the FAO summit but so was the small or family farmer, she
said. Via Campesina, an international farm rights group, refused
to sign the document prepared by the NGO forum. 
     "It's a class issue," O'Brien declared, commenting that she
found it hard to believe that the women at the food summit 22
years ago had the same concerns and that there had been "no
progress."
     Think tanks and business interests in the 1950s lobbied for
policies that would provide cheap labor by taking people off
farms, O'Brien said. More recently the free trade agreements have
had devastating effects on rural populations
     Mattie Mack's activities have centered around family and
church. Currently heading up outreach projects at the Clair United
Methodist Church in Irvington, Ky., she also has served at the
conference and national level.
     After arriving at home at 3:30 on a Saturday morning, the
energetic grandmother presented highlights of her two-week trip at
church the next day.
     "What I could see in Rome is that all the women are looking
for the same things -- better living conditions, food and better
working supplies," Mack said.
     Everyone had problems to bring to the Rural Women's Workshop,
she said. A woman from Uganda told of the women's being denied
land ownership even though they are the ones tilling the land with
hand hoes while the men sit in the shade, Mack recalled. 
     In certain areas of Asia, she said, the women simply want to
be able to do their field work without the black veils and
cumbersome garments men demand they wear at all times.
     "They want to be free," Mack said of the women. She added
that they want an end to beatings and other expressions of power
by the men.
     After the workshop, the women joined the men of the Via
Campesina whose women's group had been one of the supporters of
the Rural Women's Workshop. But here the women hit one of many
snags.
     "They were very headstrong," Mack said of the men, "and they
let us know they had an agenda and that we weren't going to change
their agenda."
     During the heated discussion that took place, Mack said, "I
stood and I talked, and I put God in my talk. I told them that we
were there for better living conditions." 
     She told them about the problems she and others in Kentucky
were having as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) -- how when she and her husband tried to sell some cows
three months earlier the price was only 17 cents a pound and they
ended up bringing the cows home again.
     That's when she learned that most of the Via Campesina men
like the free trade agreements, because they could raise cattle
and crops while still profiting at these lower prices when the
items are shipped to markets in industrialized countries.
     "Where we have to pay [more for] labor, and we have to pay
insurance on these fellows who work for us and also the Social
Security, we have to pay all that, but they don't even think about
anything like that," Mack explained.
     She said the campesinas did not want the women to take part
in a march sponsored by the mayor of Rome. The women told the men
what they thought of that, Mack noted, and they did march -- with
black gags over their mouths to show that they were being denied
full participation even in the events.
     At one point, Mack and another woman were drafted without
warning to represent the farm women at a rather formal luncheon,
where the other guests seemed to be bankers, businessmen and
mayors from around the world. In contrast to their three-piece
suits, "I was wearing my hat that says, 'Tobacco is my business,'
and my pants," she said, but they were "real nice."
     When they shared their stories around the table, Mack
explained that tobacco is her cash crop. "It sent my three
children to college, and they got their degrees." She also told
the men about raising 38 foster children. They were all troubled
children, she said, but working on the farm kept them busy.
     "The reason people want to keep the little family farm is
because there are values there that we have instilled in our
children," she paused, "and just having something that's yours and
that you know is going to be handed down to the family."
     She went on to tell the men that young people could not make
a living on the farm now and to suggest that government make farm
ownership a possibility by making low-interest loans available to
help young people get started. Mack said they should be able to
make a living on the farm without having to work an outside job
too.
     Mack grew up working with other family members on a farm in
Georgia, where they raised cotton, sorghum and other crops. She
met her husband while she was working her way through Tuskegee --
an educational experience ended when she returned to Georgia to
care for her mother after a heart attack.
     Now the Macks have a 100-acre farm in Kentucky, where their
produce includes cattle, hogs, corn, hay and four acres of
tobacco. They have 10 horses and 10 dogs on the farm too.
     Mack, who once sang with Willie Nelson at a Farm Aid concert,
sang "Amazing Grace" at Denise O'Brien's invitation for one of the
Rural Women's Workshop dinners in Rome.
     In summing up her reaction to the workshop and the NGO Forum,
Mack observed, "Overall I think everything is going to be changed
for the better. I really do. 
     "I think the women were able to get to the main source of
living. If the women don't move these men, ain't nobody can move
'em," she declared.
     Perhaps she is correct. The final sentence of a three-page
statement written by the Via Campesina in Rome reads, "Rural
women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision-
making on food and rural issues."
                              #  #  #

     * Purdue is director of the Washington office of United
Methodist News Service.

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