Improving Nutrition through Agriculture. Oh, and Women's Empowerment.
So yes, nutrition in Togo is a challenge for me, but, more importantly, it is even more so for my neighbors. And as a food security volunteer, my perspective on nutrition is informed by food systems and the nature of smallholder agriculture in Togo. Most families farm tiny plots of land, selling some staples to generate income and relying on the rest for household consumption. Food is purchased once or twice a week at the local marche. The absence of refrigeration severely limits access to fresh produce and diet is several impacted by the seasonal availability of certain foods. Women perform the majority of agricultural work, particularly when you include the post-harvest processing and storage. And women are responsible for all food purchases and meal preparation.
Now, Master Farmer conferences are a common training event in Peace Corps countries in West Africa. They bring together leading farmers from different villages around a given region to share their best practices with each other - agroforestry, crop rotation, whatever it may be. They also learn some skills for how to share what they're learning/doing with their communities - how to establish demonstration plots, how to conduct experimentation plots, etc. But at least in Togo, the participants in these conferences are almost exclusively men. I had run across some statistics that indicated that if women in sub-Saharan Africa had the same access to productive resources as men - i.e. land rights, credit, fertilizer, and knowledge/training - that household incomes would rise significantly, as would the productivity of the agriculture sector. This impact is particularly significant in SSA due to the large percentage of agricultural work performed by women. Women's land rights are not something I can do a whole lot about as a PCV. But access to knowledge and training? That's right up my alley.
So the first iteration of this idea was for a Master Farmer conference exclusively for women. Give women the access to training on improved NRM techniques. But the unique role women play in the food system in Togo and much of West Africa inspired me to think a little bigger. I had also been talking with a friend and health volunteer about her idea to target women specifically as nutrition leaders in their communities. She wanted to do essentially a Master Farmer conference, but with women and focused solely on nutrition. What about combining the two ideas? Agriculture and improved NRM practices are certainly related to nutrition, particularly in Togo, where most of the population is smallholder farmers.
But I had only a vague idea of how to connect agriculture side with nutrition. And that theoretical connection was essential to the conference - as it is to designing any kind of development intervention. What was the development community saying about agriculture and nutrition? How were the two connected? Anticipating a quiet couple of weeks before the bustle of summer work starts up at the end of May, I decided to set myself a little research project.
What I found was a growing consensus and commitment to improving nutrition through agriculture. And what do you know - I wasn't the only one to notice the unique position of women in the agriculture-nutrition nexus, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. USAID's Feed the Future program was all over it, as was the FAO in publications since 2005 or so.
So the idea of a Women's Master Farmer Nutrition Leader Conference has begun to take a more concrete form. (Although clearly we are still developing a working title). I've recruited another EAFS volunteer and two health volunteers to organize the conference, which we are hoping to hold in December for the participants from the two southern regions of Togo. Session will be centered on themes that connect sustainable farming techniques with good nutrition. For example, diversity is a key idea for both sides: crop diversity is essential as is variety in diets. Legumes are also a key idea: improve soil health by fixing atmospheric nitrogen in the soil, great to include in crop rotation, but also great to include in diets to provide protein!
And I haven't even begun to detail how women and women's empowerment ties into all of this. This is a lot, right? Maybe enough to dedicate a career to...
