“Small and simple efforts make big efforts. When we talk about food security, we must focus on small scale farmers, especially women farmers”. – Sami Hassan

The final session I attended at the LDC conference was on the role of women in agriculture. The session was sponsored by the Zenab for Women in Development (http://www.zenab.org/) based in Sudan. This was a great meeting and incredibly informative. The organizers and farmers from Zenab talked about actual ways women farmers are improving their livelihood, not just theoretical ideas.  



Agriculture Tools Built by Zenab



The founder and president of Zenab is Fatima Ahmed, who presented most of the information about the organization and explained their practices. Currently, Zenab is working with over a 1,000 women in over 25 rural communities throughout Sudan. Based on their research and experience the agriculture programs have greatly enhanced lives of woman throughout Sudan. They believe that if these initiatives were adopted in other rural communities, especially in African, food security issues could change for the better.

Zenab development work is mainly concentrated on women farmers. Their services mainly consist of providing seeds, assisting in land preparation and providing farming tools to women.

Hagir Ibrahim, a women in farmer from Sudan and an organization project manager, presented a case study about the Gedaref state in Sudan on women subsistence farmers, whom make up 57% of all farmers in Gedaref.

Lack of land sovereignty is a problem for rural farmers around the world; we see that this injustice is also problematic in Sudan. One of the main barriers that women face is land sovereignty. In Gedaref only 1% of all land is registered under a women’s name. As result of their little or no assets it is very difficult to gain access bank loans and purchase land. The lack of land limits them to growing food for only their families and unable to grow any cash crops.

One of the first actions Zenab in Gedaref was to help organize start a womens’farmer women’s union in collaboration with local agriculture authorities. Through the union a savings group was established, which eventually allowed women to establish credit with banks. With credit women were able to purchase land and began to plant cash crops. The creation of the farmer’s union helped build partnership with public and private financial groups. This was a crucial step because it increased access to inputs and outputs markets as well as knowledge, technology and extension services.

Zenab also focused on increasing women’s access to farming tools or intermediate technology. Many of the women in Gedaref were limited to using a sal’luca, a traditional tool used to prepare the land for planting. The use of new technology and tools increased efficiency, production capabilities and quality of life for women

materials used to build agriculture tools

Sami Hassan, an agriculture engineer with Zenab, built several products that enabled women to produce more for their families and increase their production levels. All of the products are made in the communities from local or recycled materials.

• Hand driven fertilizer that is light, robust and easy to operate. Allows of equal distribution of fertilizer, instead of hand distribution.
• Hand driven inter row cultivator, removes weeds from in between plants. This is instead of using one small hand tool while sitting on ground.
• Hand driven ridge re-shaper, in Sudan they plant on ridges not flat land. For high production it is essential to reshape ridges, it encourages water flow and good soil production.
• Hand driven precise planter that can plant two rows at a time. Planter also places seeds in the correct depths and spacing.

presenters from Zenab

Sami than went on to explain; “As a LDC, 70% of population is engaged with agriculture. If we are generally concerned about development, we must focus on agriculture. We must touch on the needs of the people to make the change. These small and simple technologies assist in the development of countries”.

Overall it was a very interesting session and provided concrete, simple solutions on how to improve lives of women farmers in rural communities. I appreciated that NGO workers and women farmers from Sudan made the presentation, not university professors conducting research on foreign “subjects”.