Rural women play an important role of producing food not only for their households but also for the urban population through formal and informal trade. Therefoe, agriculture is very vital to rural women because it acts as a stimulant for non-farm activities like trade, education, improved housing; improved water sources for human consumption and energy sources and use are all associated with poverty alleviation.
Rural women are mainly responsible for household food production. Men tend to focus on growing cash crops or migrate to towns to find paid work. The worsening of poverty and increase in the number of ssingle parent families mainly due to HIV/AIDS epedemic is still a major handicap to women mainstreaming in development activities. This implies that women must turn to income generating activities because their contribution to the national economy is enormous.
Women farmer institutions need to be formed because such outreach activities can increase the productivity of women in home based production, including agriculture and provision and use of household resources. Generally extension or outreach programs for women can correct factor market distortions, provide women with more equal agricultural and household technologies, and expand the effective supply of credit where they produce for market. Market opportunities can bring service providers and women farmer's together.
However, much as women are described as agents of change, they still find a lot oc challenges that do not enable them chieve their development goals. They mostly have small-scale farms, use traditional techniques and technologies, depend on family labour, and have little or no capital to invest towards commercialization and most of their inputs(family land, labour and saved are monetized. For example in Uganda, there is no policy to ensure that small holder rural women farmer's use good quality seeds, planting, and stocking materials. Often times, the seeds supplied by the government programme of National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) to women are fake with low germination percentages, the agrochemical and livestock such as dairy, cows, piglets, and chicken are very low grade making loses for small holde women farmers. In addition, most rural women do not keep farm records which would provide information as a basis for planning and balancing their production and sales against their household food requirements.
Corruption is one of the greatest evils that have undermined rural women in accelerating development in Uganda. A desire for more power is responsible for the destruction of so many individual's moral fibres. That is why more Afican economies are poor because of high levels of corruption, where records indicate that men are corruptible than women. They (men) dominate African governments, and the solution therefore, is to encourage and campaign for more representation of women in African governments.
According to the World Bank Report on Women Development 2012, it observes that for very poor countries female labour for participation is high, reflecting a large labour-intensive agricultural sector and significant numbers of poor households. It is therefore necessary for governments to encourage rural women farmer's to Farmers Enterprise Groups which follow a clear and streamlined process that should enable integration of both "poor" and "rich" farmers. This could be coupled with arrangement of agricultural study visits, exhibition, workshops and seminars to facilitate informed farming practice and decision making in order to realize sustainable livelihood among women.
Mr. Henry Kizito