The Associated Country Women of the World appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the HLPE report.
Like others, we applaud the attention paid to women. But we call for specific measures to determine women’s needs and integrate them into policies. Organisations like ACWW, which have large networks of grassroots women’s groups, are well-placed to collect information in an inclusive way. Therefore NGOs such as ours would benefit from support in collecting such information, particularly in the remote areas where many of our members reside.
We would like to call attention in particular to the role of rural women, who are often neglected by funders and policymakers. For instance, the Network of Rural Women Producers – Trinidad & Tobago, one of our member societies, provides training in the processing of mango products, which helps to reduce spoilage. Especially in 2014, the International Year of Family Farming, the international community should be looking for examples of best practices from smallholder farmers, rural residents and grassroots organisations. These groups are at the core of ACWW’s work. Measures targeting these groups should be culturally appropriate and acceptable (in terms of both cost and technology).
ACWW promotes vegetable gardening through its “Grow locally, benefit globally” campaign. One of our findings from both this campaign (which has been deployed worldwide) and our agricultural projects (which are mainly implemented in developing countries) is that people have a strong incentive to reduce food losses and waste when they have a strong connection to the food they both produce and consume. Our project beneficiaries tend to appreciate having ownership over food production. For instance, one project seeking to improve the nutrition of pregnant women in rural Cameroon became more successful after switching from a vegetable distribution model to a “one child, one vegetable plot” strategy. Vegetable consumption increased, and thus waste was reduced, when women became producers rather than simply recipients. We therefore urge the scale-up of this type of small-scale food production.
Specifically for consumers in wealthy countries, simple measures to reduce food waste can be very effective. Under the heading “Why waste food”, ACWW has distributed recipes that make use of leftovers. While this cooperative and practical approach is effective for our members, a combination of strategies – economic incentives, peer pressure, etc. – may be most helpful for others. Thus a system for sharing best practices worldwide is urgently needed.
It would be helpful for the final report to include specific recommendations, broken down by target group. We would be particularly interested in the recommendations for NGOs, which are valuable intermediaries between project beneficiaries and policymakers.
Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW)