Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Re: What role can agricultural extension and advisory services play in realizing gender equality and improved nutrition?

Pride Ebile

University of Hohenheim
Germany

I wish to send a small contribution on the topic. 

I am using the case study of an ongoing project as an example.

I have just given a brief background of the project, and the role the project plays when it comes to gender.

Please see below.

Kind Regards,

Pride Ebile

 

What role can agricultural extension and advisory services play in realizing gender equality and improved nutrition?

Case Study: Eco-Sustainable Gardens: Empowering Minority Mbororo Women

  1. Background:

This is an ongoing project in the North West Region of Cameroon. The project is focus on Mbororo Minority women. The Mbororo people are a minority group in Cameroon with the Nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyle. With climate change (longer dry season) challenges, the men have to travel far to graze the cattle, living the women behind. This make the women and children very vulnerable because they depend on their men (food insecurity and nutritional insecurity).

This project focuses on improving Mbororo women’s economic as well as physical access to nutritious food. It aims to employ an innovative approach to upland farming in establishing an economically viable, eco-friendly gardening system for the Mbororo women of the North West Region of Cameroon. This gardening system makes use of cattle manure, an otherwise wasted resource which could also be potentially harmful to the environment in that it could be a pollutant to streams and also a source of greenhouse gases emissions if not managed properly.

In accordance with the design of the project, three classes of crops were deliberated and, adopted to help with some “Food Nutritional security pillars”.

  • Economic Access to food (to be sold in the market): Pepper and Telfairia Occidentalis (fluted pumpkin) were adopted as economic or driver crops.
  • Micronutrient Needs (hidden hunger): Eggplant, Okra, and Amaranth were adopted for provision of micronutrients
  • Indigenous crop: ‘Folere’ and ‘Caracachee’ were adopted.

Key to the project is sustainability (Financial, Managerial, and Environmental Sustainably), which is where the Agricultural extension and advisory services aspect of the projects falls. The projects employs 3 graduate, to work with the women, and each plays a strategic role in the management and running of the garden project.

  • Agricultural engineer graduate: Foncham Linda
  • Business management graduate: Kidio Iris
  • And a native Mbororo graduate: Ramata Ramani

2. Gender role as agricultural extension and advisory services.

  • Reduce dependency of the women on their men: This is through working together to build a market for the first group of the garden products (economic access to food).
  • Nutritional education: Know what to eat and the importance of type of food helps with dietary diversity and thus micronutrient deficiency.
  • Social Network: Bringing the gardens women together and linking them to the market women help empower both market women selling to products from the gardens and the minority women for these can easily relate and better understand the functioning of their partners.
  • Saving: The AEAS plays a key role in helping them build the culture of saving money from the garden.

Contribution By:

Pride Ebile

Project Coordinator of Eco-Sustainable Gardens: Empowering Minority Mbororo Women  Research Associate Food Security Center of University of Hohenheim Stuttgart Germany.