Women produce up to 80% of food in developing countries
Research by the Food and Agriculture Association found women are essential to small-scale agriculture, farm labour and day-to-day family subsistence.
Slow Food, a worldwide organisation promoting traditional cooking, is celebrating women who grow food and preserve food cultures in their daily lives. According to the FAO, women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world’s food production, yet their role as food producers and providers—and their critical contribution to household food security—is only recently being recognized. FAO studies confirm that while women are essential to small-scale agriculture, farm labor and day-to-day family subsistence, they experience greater difficulty than men in accessing land, credit, as well as productivity-enhancing inputs and services.
“It is incredible how a seed, a recipe, a food can be a symbol of the women’s struggle; how we can make the inequalities and injustices that we face day by day visible through food, and how food acts as a mechanism that controls access to all our rights”, comments Dalí Nolasco Cruz, indigenous woman from Tlaola Puebla, Mexico, and Slow Food Board Member. “Because of the struggle of thousands of women across the world, today at Slow Food we can tell the stories of powerful women, women who have fulfilled their own dreams and made them collective. Even in the face of adversity women are protecting the food systems of the world, but we cannot do it alone, so on such a representative day for us I call on everyone to join our struggle. Without women there is no communality, community, collectivity, self-determination or regeneration”.
There are lots of incredible women in the Slow Food network who work hard to forge change in their communities and beyond, fighting to reduce hunger, increase food security and guarantee food access for all. Some of them are farmers, some educators, some gardeners and teachers.