The impressive growth in agriculture in Asia and the Pacific over the past two decades has outstripped population growth, so that the Region is more food-secure now than it was when the threat of widespread famine regularly stalked the subcontinent in the 1960s. The crux of the food security problem for the 5-600 million undernourished people in the Asia-Pacific Region is not so much a problem of production, but of a lack of access to available food on the part of the poor, who lack the means to buy food. This is mainly because they lack remunerative employment opportunities which provide a livelihood.
Addressing food security problems in this Region often therefore leads from issues of growth to discussion on equity, and from growth with equity inevitably to the political issues of participation and access to the factors of production - land, water, technology, know-how and so on. Non-farm income generation however is rapidly becoming a major source of cash for landless and marginal rural families. More recently, the word sustainability has also been thrown into the dialogue. The missing ingredient in addressing rural poverty through growth, equity and participation however is often gender - a word much bandied about in esoteric circles of support for women, but easily and readily forgotten by most when the way is clear to do so.
Gender equity however is increasingly recognised as an indispensable link in the food security chain, because women now number over half the farmers in Asia and the Pacific, and are increasingly responsible for household food security. In Vietnam women farmers number as many as 70 percent. In Papua New Guinea women grow most of the food crops, and in India women outnumber male farmers by a substantial margin (Shiva, 1991). Yet their production and their productivity is constrained - sometimes severely constrained - by a plethora of factors which have much to do with social, political and cultural issues, and little to do with biology.
Non-wood forest products can offer a lifeline to food security for an increasing number of rural households. Not all farmers can abandon uneconomic farms in favour of better opportunities in other sectors, so those forced to eke out a living on degraded lands and from denuded forests have increasingly focussed their creative sights on other rural resources to augment a meagre farm income, while the landless turn to Common Property Resources (CPR) in forests and elsewhere for the materials and produce with which to make a living. Indeed women have been doing this since time began, using a host of forest products for handicrafts, dyes, waxes, tools, clothing, medicines, food and fodder. Traditional land tenure and use patterns which accorded rights of access to common property resources such as forests allowed everyone to enjoy their bounty, but these are now increasingly under threat of exclusion by privatisation, conversion, clear felling, replacement with plantations and so on. Competition for land of all types has squeezed out the people most in need of additional resources, at a time when they can least afford to forfeit those rights. As traditional, participatory decision-making and management has been systematically eroded by power-élites, farmers most dependent on traditional access to CPRs - the poorest farmers on marginal farming lands and landless rural families - are asked to surrender their right to supplement income and strengthen household food security. The predictable result is that many then plunge from poverty into destitution, fuelling rural-urban migration, dependency, unemployment, hunger, poverty and a plethora of related phenomena. The few who retain access to forest areas may well prosper through the development of non-wood forest products, but most remain at best in the margins of life. Without relevant training and necessary support to take the leap of transition from subsistence farmer to entrepreneur, many are forced to abandon rural life as "environmental" or "economic" migrants in urban slums.
Exacerbating this situation is the low priority accorded vocational education by most Governments in this Region. At a time when "manpower" planning requirements indicate the need for more, not less skilled technicians, vocational education is declining as a percentage of all education - the reverse of the situation in other Regions. Where they do exist, vocational schools and colleges are generally concentrated in urban areas, and the student population is overwhelmingly male. Girls who enroll are found mainly in the "warm and cuddly" areas of nursing, home economics, secretarial and information service sectors.
