Closing the Gap: Women and Climate-Smart Agriculture
Thursday 8 March was 2018 International Women’s Day. Our Partner, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) posted some short interviews on their website, showing how researchers are pushing for progress in the area of gender equality in agriculture. Dr Leocadio Sebastian, Regional Program Leader of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), addressed the goal of equal access to climate-smart agriculture for hands-on female farmers across the globe:
“Our studies reveal that [women] have less access to climate-smart technologies, training, and information compared to men. Our research focuses on how we can help reduce women’s drudgery in rice production, provide women access to climate information, and engage them in community-based climate-smart technologies and practices. For example, our project, “Using Agro-Climate Information to Enhance the Adaptive Capacity of Women and Ethnic Minority Smallholders” in Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao PDR, has a strong gender-focus and will closely monitor climate information in terms of acceptability to men and women. We also promote climate-smart rice varieties, such as improved salt-tolerant rice varieties, to reduce replanting, a task which is relegated to poor women. We help empower women with technical knowledge through training, demonstration trials, and participatory community-based activities like backyard swine production using local materials for feed ration.”