1. How does climate change affect women farmers and how can they better adapt to it?
a. Asia’s 4 billion people are fed by women. The women ensure that there is food on the family’s dining table. In rural Asia, most of the farmers are women. Usually, they prepare food they have grown themselves together with what they bought at the local market.
Global warming leads to more natural disasters,and rural women and children are the most vulnerable during disasters. Climate change leads to fewer and poorer quality of produce, lowering incomes and domestic supply of food. If global warming threatens food supply, and if it leads to increased food prices, it is the women farmers who are more burdened as they are the first to problematize how to feed their families.
2. Why you think is it important to consider and deal with climate change effects in different productive systems — seeds, natural resources, fisheries, livestock? How can bio-resources be enhanced to avoid the extreme effects of climate change?
b. We believe that key strategic responsea to the issue of climate change are: massive support and promotion of sustainable, integrated, diversified, organic/ecological friendly agriculture and agro-based industries which are owned, controlled and managed by organizations of small scale men and women farmers, fishers and indigenous peoples, and massively supported by government policies and programs, at local, national and international levels.
The key element of sustainable agriculture is smallholders’ access and control over, and wise and efficient use of, natural production resources such as land, water, seas, and seeds. It means access to marketing resources such as credit, capital, technology, infrastructure, post harvest facilities, food processing facilities, market information and analysis.
In so doing, we ask that government budgetary allocation, public and private investments, technical assistance, credit, financing, markets, post harvest facilities, research and documentation, extension and capacity building, demonstration farms, knowledge learning activities, incentives and policies – all these be in support for sustainable agriculture and agro-industry, by small holders and entrepreneurs, as smallholders produce majority of the region’s food.
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