Of Gender, Climate Change, Food Security& Nutrition

 

The link between gender, climate change and food security has always been disturbingly unsettling for me ever since I was younger. I so vividly remember the 1991- 1992 drought that hit our village. I was 8 years old at the time. I remember seeing our livestock dying, nearby rivers drying up and parents marrying off their young daughters in order to put food on the table. In retrospect, I realize that in times of environmental crises, a girl-child can be a mere commodity that can be exchanged for money or a plate of food to feed members of the family. This experience inspired me in ways I could have never imagined. It made me to be so passionate about women, food security, sustainable agriculture and the environment especially for most rural communities.

 

The droughts became recurrent ever since 1991 and most families who practice subsistence farming have failed to produce enough food for their family. The community survives on International aid from World Food Program (WFP) or Food and Agriculture  Organization (FAO). The system has worked in the past, but Covid-19 meant resources were diverted to health care, to fight this global pandemic. Food aid was cut, and the village was left to fend for themselves.  It was a wakeup call for us and we saw need to come up with climate smart ways to produce food.

Subsistence farming/agriculture by definition is when a farmer grows food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on a small piece of land. Subsistence farming’s objective is farm output for survival, with little or no surplus. It is mainly characterized by:

• small financial  injection,
• mixed cropping,
• limited use of agrochemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides,
• unimproved varieties of crops and animals,
• little or no surplus yield for sale,
• use of traditional tools such as hoes, machetes, and cutlasses,
• mainly the production of food crops,
• Reliance on unskilled labour usually family members,
• And generally produces low yields.

 

In the past, subsistence farming would produce just enough to feed the family for a year, but climate change has become a game changer.  With rise in temperatures, unreliable rainfall, droughts and flooding, food insecurity is on the rise. Children under five are always malnourished,  school going children, go to school on empty stomachs and they hardly concentrate in class, women now have to spend more and more time in the fields, and yet they continue to produce less and less food each year. Hunger is a global pandemic whose solution is strengthening agricultural systems to be more capable of performing well in the face of extremes of weather.

 

Environmental Buddies Zimbabwe has been working with rural communities farmers in Zimbabwe training them on sustainable conservation farming methods  that help restore soil quality, increase yield and reduce overall food insecurity in their communities while reducing the amount of new land cleared for agriculture.  This includes mixing trees with food crops in one piece of land. A pilot field at EBZ offices for cassava and trees planted in January 2020 is looking hopeful as we wait for harvest.

Another pilot field with maize and truncheons promises a maize bumper harvest for the EBZ Team.

In addition to reforestation and agriculture, community livelihood initiatives such as Bee-Keeping and fruits harvesting and processing have been the main pillars of EBZ’s livelihood projects.  The organization will continue to look for new collaborations in bid to end hunger and poverty.

As Farai  Maguwu from Centre for Natural Resources Governance put it , ‘we need food sovereignty. A proud people must never be reduced to a charity case, being fed by other countries. We have very good soil, fairly average rains, manpower – come on, let’s fix this and reclaim our breadbasket status. Yes we can do it.