Relationship
between food security
and information

For the last two decades, the issues of sustainable development and recognition of women's economic and social roles in society have been attracting increasing attention from civil society, international organizations and governments alike. The interest shown by these bodies is partly linked to a phenomenon that emerged towards the end of the twentieth century: the exponential growth of information and communications technologies. The wide variety and diversity of information and the speed with which it circulates have had an undeniable effect on the mechanisms of social control and regulation.

Recent international conferences, such as the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) and the World Food Summit (Rome, 1996), have addressed these issues. The relationships among sustainable development, food security, gender equality and information have been analysed, making it possible to identify some of the factors that contribute to increased poverty and exclusion. These factors include:

• limited access for subsistence farmers, particularly women farmers, to all resources;¹
• scarce attention paid to the roles and responsibilities of men and women when formulating agricultural and rural development plans and policies;
• inadequate gender-specific data and information, hindering decision-making aimed at improving gender equality and political, economic and social equity;
• exclusion of a large part of the population, including rural women, from information flows, communication processes and, thus, decision-making.

The conferences provided an opportunity to stress that subsistence farmers are the most vulnerable to impoverishment and the most exposed to food insecurity because of their limited access to resources. The most seriously affected and deprived in this respect are women farmers,² despite the paradoxical fact that in developing countries they produce more than half of total food crops.³

One of the causes of this situation is the globalization of the economy, which often has negative repercussions on small farmers and disadvantaged segments of the population. Small-scale production systems are being thrown off balance by the liberalization of trade, the privatization of resources and services, structural adjustment policies, the marketing and modernization of agriculture, and other socio-economic factors such as HIV/AIDS. Effects include the rural exodus of men in search of paid employment and, hence, the increase in number of female-headed households. These households have to manage on fewer resources, because the men's wages rarely make up for the loss of agricultural income. In developing countries, the feminization of poverty and of agriculture are two of the most visible consequences.

Methods of development policy planning and evaluation were also debated at the international conferences, and two key issues were highlighted:

The formulation of development policies is frequently based on the misconception that the needs and interests of all the farmers within the same production system are similar. As a consequence, when production systems are being assessed and analysed prior to defining action priorities and resource allocation, the differences and complementarities of the roles and tasks undertaken by men and women are neglected. However, it has been demonstrated that, if the contributions of men and women are taken into account equitably when allocating productive resources, agricultural production can rise.⁴

Planning procedures are changing rapidly as a result of reduced finances, increasing decentralization and the growing influence of civil society. The potential of human resources in this new environment must be appraised so that each individual can become fully involved in the development process. Gender-specific information and sex-disaggregated data are therefore crucial, as is the use of participatory approaches.

Source: FAOSTAT, 1999.

Source: FAOSTAT, 1999.

When examining the degree of women's access to communications technologies and the role of media in disseminating information, several international conferences have noted the following:

The exchange, mobilization and outreach capacities offered by information technologies are of little benefit to women, particularly in developing countries. The many reasons for this include: lack of training in the use of these technologies; the low percentage of women working in the media; the physical, social and psychological isolation of women; the lack of infrastructure; and limited financial resources.

The image of women that is portrayed in the media is very often limited to their traditional reproductive role. Such an image is simplistic and often produces negative results, particularly in commercial and advertising messages.

Technological progress in the information and communications field could make it possible for women to perform activities that foster and strengthen their power, through launching information campaigns, creating interactive communications networks, spreading distance learning opportunities, etc.

In view of this situation, and by using information as a decision-making tool, a means of empowerment and a means of negotiation, a better understanding of the economic and social contributions of men and women, their respective roles and the ways in which they interact becomes both possible and urgent. Current data on these issues are incomplete and do not adequately illustrate the effects that new trends in society have on rural populations' livelihoods. Governments, in close collaboration with the rural population, should be able to collect, analyse and check the validity of information, in order to determine economic and social priorities and to decide on investments and actions to be taken.

¹ These include: productive resources (land, water, inputs, etc.); technological resources (tools, machines, etc.); educational resources (extension, vocational training, teaching, literacy); social resources (health care, social services and allowances); economic resources (capital, credit, jobs, wages, etc.); and political resources (information, decision-making, management, representation etc.).

² FAO. 1998. Rural women and food security, current situation and perspectives. Rome.
³ FAO. 1995. A fairer future for rural women. Rome.

⁴ World Bank. 1999. Gender, growth and poverty reduction. Washington, DC. In this report on poverty in sub-Saharan Africa in 1998 it is shown, for example, that production in Burkina Faso could be raised by 10 to 20 percent if the resources in each household were shared between the men's and the women's plots. In Kenya, harvests from women's plots could increase by more than 20 percent if men and women had access to identical quantities of inputs.

- FAO/20590/M. MARZOT

- FAO/17931/L. DEMATTEIS