Women in Agriculture and Rural Development The importance of women in managing change International Rural Women’s Congress 3 October, Spain

Fran Freeman Chief Economist Agriculture and Trade Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics

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Good morning everyone and thank you for the opportunity to speak at this wonderful gathering.

Today I’d like to focus my presentation on some of the forces for change that have taken place affecting both agriculture and rural development and how women have played a pivotal role in facilitating and managing change In addition, I’d also like to touch upon some of the ongoing pressures that may help or hinder peoples’ ability to adapt.

Agriculture and rural regions have diversified in response to a raft of forces. Obvious reasons come to mind such as increasing environmental pressures, a raft of communication and transport technologies, civil unrest just to name a few. Indeed it seems like the world gets smaller every day.

While the extent of diversification that has taken place around the world varies enormously, the dynamic forces of the world we live in still manage to take hold in some form or another. We all feel that we are under financial stress irrespective of our income level and we need to take better steps to manage the risks in our lives. The role agriculture plays in people’s lives 2

varies a great across the countries represented here today as does it’s link to rural development. Nonetheless, rural life and rural households remains an important part of each of our worlds.

So how well are people in agriculture and rural areas more generally placed to cope and adapt with the changes placed upon them. Let me give you some evidence from farm surveys that are carried out in Australia that paints a telling picture about the role women play, the skills they bring, the contribution they make and how it adds to the sustainability and viability of rural areas.

Twice as many women who live on farms in Australia have post school education compared to their male counterparts. This enhanced skill set provides potentially greater opportunities to adapt for example to changing economic circumstances.

It is worth noting that this number does not vary significantly across the different age groups of women who live on farms. So if you’re 60 or you’re 30, you’re still likely to have a better education than the men on the farm.

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On a related point, this statistic is matched by the fact that we know that on average, more women than men who work off their farm in Australia, are employed in professional occupations and earn higher incomes.

Even more interesting I find is the fact that more women from Australian farms are employed in professional occupations than women who live in urban areas.

So, let’s have a look at the sorts of jobs these women are employed in and the contribution they make. Our data tells us that more half of them work in the health and education industries.

This is consistent with a saying in rural Australia that has been around for many years and that is the advice given to many males living in country areas. You would be well placed to marry a nurse or a teacher. It would appear that many men have in the past and continue to do pretty much that. The reason for this advice has always been that a farm will be better placed to cope with financial pressures if there is a member of the farm household able to earn a decent living off the farm should it be

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wanted or required and bring additional cash into the farm business and the household.

The facts certainly would seem to support the link that has been established by the data that in cases where farm household members undertake continuing education through their working lives, their farms are more profitable farms on average than those that do not.

By way of comparison, it is also worth noting that men who live on Australian farms also earn money off the farm. On average, one third of women and one quarter of men on farms obtain some income from being employed off the farm. Indeed these farms had greater farm incomes than those households who didn’t have members who earn money off the farm.

Access to off farm income provides additional flexibility to farm households to cope with the fluctuations typical of farm incomes in Australia and women are critical to managing these pressures.

And access to education for females and opportunities to earn income off the farm are key drivers of the ability to sustain rural areas.

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Another area where the contribution should not be understated is the vital contribution women make to farms and rural areas. Women on Australian farms make the largest contribution to community and volunteer work in their regions.

So let’s go back onto the farm to look at some other interesting aspects of the role of women in agriculture. We know from our surveys that women on Australian farms spend on average more time and effort on the aspects of financial management of the farm business than their male business partners. Indeed from my own personal experience as a junior researcher when we all sent out to various rural areas around Australia to survey farms and I regularly observed this phenomenon. In many instances, the picture is this – the man can tell you without a moment’s hesitation how many lambs were born during the year, the percentage of ewes who had twins, how many bales of hay were cut and the area planted to each crop down to the acre. His partner could tell you also in a split second how much the dollar value per tonne of each type of fertiliser or chemical used during the course of the year, how much the business spent on tractors repairs and could make a pretty accurate guess what their provisional tax bill might be.

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Women have and continue to play a critical role in facilitating adjustment and managing change on farms.

I would be interested to see the statistics on farms across the world to see if they vary much to see if the trends are markedly different. From the small amount of knowledge I have, women in developing countries also play a crucial role on farms managing finances. The information on micro finance systems around the world provides many interesting and encouraging examples.

Access to credit for the poor in developing countries is by and large a fraught subject. Adequate markets for most services we take for granted in the developed world – such as credit, land and water do not usually exist. Further, even if a credit market existed, the poor do not have access to collateral to obtain it and are often at the mercy of those controlling it.

I’ll run through just a few fabulous examples where women have turned the fortunes of their families and farms around by establishing finance markets that work for them, their families, their farms and their communities:

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The Grameen bank in Bangladesh is perhaps the best known and has become an inspiration and a model since its inception more than 25 years ago. It is a bank owned by the poor, 95 per cent of whom are women and has the astounding loan recovery rate of 98 per cent. I’m not sure there are too many banks in Australia that could boast this success.

It’s objectives includes extending banking facilities to poor men and women; to create opportunities for self employment for the many unemployed people in rural Bangladesh and to bring the disadvantaged, mostly women from the poorest households, within the fold of an organisational format which they can understand and manage by themselves.

The Grameen bank provides 3 types of loans: Income generating loans, housing loans and higher education loans for children of Grameen families. Scholarships are given to the children of Grameen members, with priority on girl children. In an average year, 3000 rural children in Bangladesh, mostly girls receive these scholarships.

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To date, the Grameen bank has also provided loans to around 16,000 borrowers to buy mobile phones and offer telecommunication services to more than 20,000 villages in Bangladesh where this service never existed before. This facility is allowing women and communities to embrace and capture the benefits of the dynamic information world we live in.

Access to education and infrastructure are just 2 of the essential areas of capacity building required to promote sustainable economies and from that sustainable households and societies

According to a survey carried out by the Bank, 42 per cent of borrower families have crossed the poverty line with the remaining families moving steadily towards the line from below it.

Let me give you another example, this time from Niger. Mata Masa Dubara (please excuse my poor pronunciation) – known as MMD which means ‘women on the move’ in Hausa’ are women’s credit and savings groups that CARE has helped organise throughout Niger. Over an eight month training period, groups of 25-30 women learn how to manage and use the collection of weekly contributions to make loans to their

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members. For example, a person in the group deposits with the groups’ management committee the equivalent of 25 cents per week. This does not sound like much to you or I, but in a very poor country like Niger, where most people live on less than 40 cents a day, this is significant.

This is another example where the lives of families are improved by small capacity building investments – the project helps raise the self esteem and awaken within women’s groups, the possibility of what can be achieved by working together. By building women’s capacity for self improvement, the project reinforces their ability to survive, women can be better heard, and therefore the chances of improving women’s rights in a male dominated society.

The beauty of the MMD approach is that no external funds are given to the groups. All loans are made possible by the women’s own savings and they are on their own after the eight month training period.

Let me know move onto another key driver of change in our world.

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All too frequently in the media we hear debates on the pros and cons of the vague word we all throw around called globalisation. It would seem that depending on whom you believe, this concept will be the making or ruination of us all and the societies we live in.

Well I don’t know if providing a clear definition will help, but I think in general what most people are referring to is the impact of the relatively more rapid pressures for change societies have been faced with, as we all seem to move closer together.

I would argue that the adjustment pressures both women and men in agriculture in developing countries is worse than it needs to be as a result of the protectionist agricultural policies of the United States, the EU and Japan.

Continued support through market access barriers, domestic support to inefficient farmers and export subsidies has the effect of putting more subsidised agricultural production onto world market prices. This continues to suppress prices farmers receive in countries with low support levels and increases price volatility because fewer countries have to bear the prices fluctuations, while the rich remain shielded from them.

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Economic development in rural areas is less than it would otherwise be in the absence of protection and support. Going back to my previous microfinance examples, those women can borrow less money to improve their lives given that their incomes are lower than they would otherwise be.

Another example where rural men and women are greatly disadvantaged is the provision of preferential market access to some developing countries and not to others. Depending on whether or not your country happens to have colonial ties and who its with, tends to impact upon the price of some of the major commodities produced by developing countries. So, if you are a sugar producer in Surinam or Mauritius, your export price for sugar can be up to 400 per cent more than if you are a producer in another developing country such as Thailand. These differences in prices demonstrate how some of the poor are helped at the expense of others. I would argue that there is a less discriminatory way to provide development assistance.

Further, those countries that largely as a result of historical circumstance receive these preferences are not quite as fortunate as the donors would have us believe. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that the farms supposedly targeted to gain the

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higher prices in the recipient countries don´t actually obtain many of the benefits, with the majority of rents from such schemes going into the pockets of a few - many of whom interests lie in the donor country.

One current scheme that has come under criticism is the Everything But Arms scheme of the EU that is extending its preference schemes to Least Developed Countries in addition to those countries under its existing arrangements.

Additional access for sugar, rice and bananas – three major commodities that developing countries are generally more efficient at producing is not allowed for a number of years. In other words, we’ll give you access to some things, but not the things that you’re really good at that give you a greater chance for economic growth.

Another issue that I think is worth raising today goes back to this nebulous issue of globalisation. There is no doubt, as I said at the outset of my address that people across the world are now all much closer to each other than we used be. People and money move much more freely than they have ever before. Societies that have previously been largely shielded from world

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forces have to react and adapt in a relatively short space of time. People and governments are having to respond to more information and changing incentives. This is likely to be greatly affected by the balance between traditional and modern values, with education playing a pivotal role. Equally so, the role of governments in promoting change and positive adaptation with leadership, good policy, stability and governance are critical.

This issue concerns me for a number of reasons and goes very much to the subject matter of this session. Agriculture and rural development – the reality is that rural development in developing countries is driven by the success of its agricultural industries. This will be the case for quite some time. This is not the case for developed countries where the economic significance of their agricultural sectors is falling irrespective of whether or not it receives support from its government. That is not to say that agriculture is not valued nor is the rural way of life, but rather it is a reflection of the dynamic process of economic and social development every country goes through.

Let me give you some points of comparison. Off farm income for farms in the EU represent more than half of the money coming into farm households. In Japan, this number is 85 per

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cent. Rural development in these countries is heavily reliant on industries other than agriculture for its future success. For the vast majority of developing countries, the opposite is true where agriculture is the major source of income, employment and foreign exchange.

People need to be able to do what they are good at and for any of the barriers or impediments to them achieving their best removed. This includes both at the domestic and international level. For example, the problem of urban bias in government investment in many developing countries. This includes providing more adequate investment in education, health, infrastructure and research and development.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate a number of points.

The facts are there: Women have and continue to make a huge contribution to the financial, social, environmental and emotional wellbeing of rural areas throughout the world. This is something to be proud of and to celebrate. In so many cases, there is a far greater contribution just waiting to be made if only we address the barriers to them achieving it.

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Thank you for your time.

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