Empowering smallholder women farmers through participatory seed potato management: Lessons from Welmera district, Ethiopia

Oumer, A.M., Tiruneh, W.G. and Tizale, C.Y. (2014) ‘Empowering smallholder women farmers through participatory seed potato management: Lessons from Welmera district, Ethiopia’, Journal of Sustainable Development, 7(5), pp. 93–110

The role of women in agricultural activities and how they are recognized in the community is enunciated in the introductory part of the study. Accordingly, women play a great role in agricultural activities. However, their contribution went unrecognized due to various socio-cultural reasons. Among other things, women are excluded from the research and development agendas, and the perception of farmers is assigned to masculinity whereas women are portrayed with their reproductive role as caregivers. Regardless of their contribution to agricultural activities from the beginning to the end, their effort is unpaid, and they are not entitled to any decision-making roles. Due to this, they don’t have access to resources, credits, markets, inputs, technologies, and extension services. To change these dynamics and empower women in agricultural activities, a participatory research approach through improved seed potato production has been implemented in the central highlands of Ethiopia. Potato seed production has great potential to improve agronomic techniques for potato production and empower marginalized women farmers who have been engaged in cereal production.

With a primary goal of analyzing how targeted gender-sensitive intervention can empower smallholder farmers, the author used semi-structured key informant interviews, group discussions, informal discussions with different experts, and participant observations of the case study area. Moreover, the data is supplemented by documentation of evolving nature of the participatory interventions from 2006 to 2013.

According to the finding through the intervention women farmers enhanced their collective capacity in disease control, following up on seed quality, procuring inputs, and undertaking monthly meetings and decision-making in the processes. It also noted that investing in rural women’s skill will bring socio-economic empowerment, innovation, and results in the enhancement of women’s decision-making role in their livelihood choices. Women farmers are also acknowledged that their participation in a group work provided them with various opportunities for sharing experience, knowledge transfer, and overall enhancement of their social and human capital including their spouses and other family members. They have also enhanced their capacity for collective action and were able to access inputs timely and adequately; able to produce enough food and earn cash from marketing the surplus that significantly improved their livelihoods. The other benefits women gained from the intervention program are the evaluation and implementation of modern technologies to their local circumstances and needs. Moreover, the information linkage widens their market opportunities and returns to the extent of establishing women’s seed potato producer cooperatives. However, it indicated that women farmers continued to face market failure because of market distortions and glut that materialize due to asymmetric market information in the area.

Generally, the author noted that women farmers can be empowered to change their livelihoods. They can even become sources of knowledge and seed to their communities if they get appropriate training, technology, extension services, and inputs as seen in this case study. Thus government, stakeholders, and other development-oriented organisations shall prioritize scaling  out  this  type  of  gender-sensitive  intervention  to realize women’s empowerment in agriculture.