Empowering
women for ensuring the Nutritional Food Security of the Household
and increasing farmer income
under the Prevailing Economic Crisis in Sri Lanka
“Implementing Contingency Climate Smart Nutrition Sensitive Home Gardening
(CERCSNSHG) program in climatically the most vulnerable Hotspot areas of 11
districts in Sri Lanka commenced in 2022 with 64, 407 households beneficiaries
in 2 phases: for ensuring food & nutrition security and
increase farmer income under the prevailing economic crisis in Sri Lanka”.
BackgroundThe
basic concept of the home garden system evolved thousands of years ago. The
basic structures of the home garden varied from place to place, based on their
ecological, socioeconomic, and cultural settings. The structure and crops of
the home gardens are almost the same in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. Generally,
home gardening is practiced on a small scale of land close to the
dwelling premise. The produce from the home garden is usually added to the
daily nutrient supplements of the family members. Home garden is a kind of
farming technique, which does not involve the use of chemical fertilizers and
pesticides and therefore promotes nutritional and organic food safety.Climate
Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP) aims to enhance climate resilience,
crop productivity, and farm income of smallholder agriculture in climatically most vulnerable regions (hotspots) of Sri Lanka by focusing on three core
areas: agricultural production, market, value chain development, and water
storage and management. This overarching goal is to be realized by promoting: Climate-Smart
Agriculture (CSA) technologies and practices, market-responsive and diversified
crop patterns, secure and dependable irrigation systems, proactive input and
extension supports, women empowerment for economic decisions and collective
bargaining, access to processing, storage, and value chain networks.
Since
nutritional food security cannot be divorced from the resilience, productivity,
and economic adaptability of agricultural production systems. Although food
systems form only a part of agricultural production systems, given their
significance for rural livelihoods and national consumption, they have impacts
far beyond the agricultural sector. CSIAP does have an underlying, but
fundamental, need to equally transform the food systems.
Therefore,
Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP) is now implementing the 2nd phase of the Climate Smart Nutritional Sensitive
Home Gardening (CSNSHG) program as the name of Contingent Emergency Response
Nutritional Sensitive Home Garden Programme – 2022 for ensuring nutritional food security of the household and to increase farmer income under the prevailing
economic crisis in Sri Lanka. This program is primarily focusing on women who
are living in climatically vulnerable hotspots in rural areas in Sri Lanka.
Opportunities
and Challenges for implementing the Contingency Nutritional
Sensitive Home Garden Programme – 2022
Factors
within the agriculture sector that impede rural women’s economic and social
empowerment include lack of ownership of productive resources such as land,
lower wages, limited program focus on female farmers, and poor avenues to
engage in the decision-making process in the agriculture sector. Through these
home garden activities, women are encouraged to undertake the cultivation of
vegetables, fruits, and condiments in their home gardens achieving household food
& nutritional security while opening avenues to have a sustainable source
of income for the household. By being effectively involved with this home
gardening program women can contribute to fulfilling the family’s nutritional food
requirements through the home garden, improving the family’s food consumption
pattern, and minimizing the cost of food requirements of the family. This
subproject is not only a significant milestone of rural women's empowerment in
the selected hotspot area but also helps to ensure nutritional food security during
the country’s current economic crisis.
At
the same time, food & nutrition are very important concepts. The National
Nutrition Policy (NNP) in Sri Lanka iterates, ‘The nutritional well-being of a
population is influenced by determinants that cut across the areas of
responsibilities of different sectors and agencies. Household food insecurity,
for example, is influenced by factors such as health, education, employment,
food availability, and food affordability, and leads to malnutrition.
Therefore, home gardens and nutrition-related subprojects are most relevant to
improve the existing situation and conditions of the rural community. Also,
this subproject will respond to the relatively low levels of nutrition among
children, pregnant ladies, elders, young children, men, and women and ensure
higher standards of nutrition for all citizens in Sri Lanka. Nutrition levels
of children are a key concern, as well as those of younger women.
Considering
all the above facts, the CSIAP is implementing Contingent Emergency Response Nutrition
Sensitive Home Gardens (CERNSHG) in 2022 with farm women as a strategy for
increasing nutritional food security through women empowerment during the
current economic crisis in Sri Lanka. Women who will be involved with the
project are familiar with the cultivation of vegetables and other food crops in
their home gardens but failed to utilize their resources sustainably.
Interestingly,
the disruptions caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the current serious
economic crisis in Sri Lanka have exposed some of the challenges and
fragilities of contemporary nutritional food systems. These issues include
problems of access to affordable, safe, and nutritious food supply under
lockdown and closed market situations, food loss from delayed
cultivation/harvest due to movement restrictions, the vulnerability of farmers
growing high-value, labour-intensive, and perishable crops, and livelihood risks
of those engaged in informal food value chains and supply chain networks.
The
disruptions in food systems will create opportunities to drive positive and
long-term-oriented changes. To begin with, by exposing how responsive or
otherwise the different segments of existing food systems are, the crisis did
provide an opportunity to identify weak spots and take corrective actions. The
uncertainties caused by disturbances in imports and distant supply sources have
also underlined the importance of closer and more flexible supply sources and
shorter and predictable value chains. There is an impetus to rely more on
alternate input sources and localized markets, and create resilient food supply
chains through decentralized storage, inventory management, and spaced
investment options. The current crisis has also provided a new thrust, ensuring
food security and context for protecting agricultural ecosystems and
biodiversity as a natural buffer for food systems against diseases,
anthropogenic risks, and natural imbalances.
Food
Systems Transformation Through Home Gardening: What and Why?
Food
systems involve not just food production systems but the entire gamut of
ecological, infrastructural, institutional, and policy environments within
which they operate. In this sense, the key components of food systems are the production
system and its landscape and ecology, irrigation, input and extension
infrastructures and institutions, value chain, marketing, and supply chain
networks, and overall policy environment. Home gardening is needed to transform
these components to make the food systems not only economically efficient &
ecologically sustainable but also climatically resilient, nutritionally
sensitive, accessible to the needy, and flexible and responsive to emerging
changes and uncertainties.
Since
the home gardening program is a key part of the overall attempt of CSIAP to
transform the entire smallholder agriculture itself there are many operational
linkages & functional synergies between the objectives of the home garden
and the overall project development objectives of CSIAP.
Further,
the current economic crisis and the COVID -19 pandemic limit the future food
supply of the country through the limited availability of food items and also
owing to the unhealthy financial status of the country. During the field visit,
women farmers highlighted the need for home gardens to meet family consumption
and minimize the malnutrition problem in rural areas with climatic
vulnerability. They have pointed out that the surplus production may give
additional income or savings to farming families while supplying reduced
pesticide/ pesticide-free fresh fruits and vegetables to the end users for their
daily consumption.
In
addition to the above fact, based on the country’s current economic crisis,
there is a critical need to promote and maintain sustainable home gardens in
the most climatically vulnerable hotspot areas to ensure nutritional food security
and reduce hunger and malnutrition all over the country. Therefore, CSIAP has already
implemented the CSNSHG program in 11 climatically most vulnerable hotspot areas
with 5,545 in 2020/21. The second phase of the CERCSNSHGP is currently implemented
by addressing lessons learned from the first phase of the HG programs in the
hotspot areas.
The
beneficiary of CERCSNSHGP – 2022
Table no. 01 indicates the number of households selected for implementing the Contingency
Climate
Smart Nutritional Sensitive Home Gardening Program 2022. It was identified that
approximately 82,692 farmer households are located in the climatically
vulnerable hotspot areas and out of that 5, 545 households benefitted under the
CSNSHG Program in 2020/21. In addition to that considering the prevailing
economic crisis of the country 64,407 households were identified for the Contingency Climate Smart Nutritional Sensitive Home Garden Programme –
2022 under the CSIA project. The 1st phase of the program is being
implemented in the early Maha Season of 2022 and 2nd phase of the
same program will be implemented in the late Maha season of 2022.
Table no. 02 is indicating that conducted awareness/
meetings/ discussions which held with the officials on the Implementation of the
Contingent Emergency Response Home Garden Programme – 2022 to accelerate the
program in the climatically most
vulnerable hotspot areas. The acceleration and
the successful implementation of this program were with 19 awareness/ meetings/
discussions/ progress reviews with the relevant officials of the project and
still, it’s going weekly. Table n0. 03 is indicating that conducted IEC & ICT
Campaigns for the Contingent Emergency Response Home Garden Programs for the
Public. The project support increasing agricultural productivity for both men
and women sustainably. Therefore, IEC & ICT campaigns build on men's and
women's knowledge of local resources and climatic condition/ weather
information, awareness on increasing women's access to advisory services,
education, and information on sustainable agriculture, by training female
extension agents, using specific methods appropriate and accessible for women
(announcements, public campaigns, disseminating information leaflets and
posters), and planning training and demonstrations in venues convenient for
both women and men, Support men's and women's organizations and networks, and
strengthen the capacity of women's groups, offering matching grants for
enterprise and business development which facts were informed to the public
through the IEC & ICT campaign. 268 IEC & ICT campaigns were conducted
with the participation of 27854 public out of 18498 (66%) were rural women in
climatically most vulnerable hotspot areas.
Rural
women are empowered on the CSA options/ practices which are stress tolerance
varieties, conservation agriculture, improved home garden, on-farm tree
planting, and composting. Stress-tolerant varieties are bred to be adapted to
specific climate challenges, such as droughts, floods, submergence, saline or
acidic soils, and pests, so they can be effective in improving food security by
reducing the risk of crop failure. However, stress-tolerant varieties are often
expensive and require new technologies and more inputs to grow, which could be
a challenge for women, who face more constraints than men in accessing
resources and knowledge. Small-scale
irrigation systems, like rainwater harvesting, and agro wells can provide a
secure supply of water for domestic use and home gardens, even in times of
drought. Such systems enable year-round home garden cultivation and improve
nutritional food security for families. They can also reduce the time women
spend collecting water, thus allowing them to invest freed time and energy in
education and productive work, and giving them access to and control over the additional
income and benefits brought by these systems.
In this way, men and women
in were received technical training on soil conservation, rainwater harvesting,
crop mulching, using grow bags for cultivation, and preparing compost and
liquate fertilizer in the climatically most vulnerable hotspot area under this
program. 284 technical training conducted so far and 18529 public participated
and out of that 11680 (63%) of them are rural women from climatically most vulnerable
hotspot areas.
Women’s
adaptation ability can be affected by labor requirements from Climate-Smart
Agricultural practices. Therefore, the project helps to reduce women’s workload
and time poverty. For example: Promote labor-saving technologies and
methodologies (such as machinery and tools easily handled by women and
children), and adopt household methods to discuss within families on labor
concerns of men and women. Therefore the following items are providing to the
farmers free of charge in 2022.
Under
this program selected all beneficiaries (100%) receive inputs like a variety of
vegetable seeds (Chili, Tomato, Brinjal, ladies finger
/Okra, Long beans, Capsicum (O.P), Bitter gourd, Snake gourd, Wing bean,
Radish, Cucumber, Luffa, Spinach¸ and Grow Bags & Compost bag (25 kg), Planting Materials and Poultry Chicks distribute
among 50% of identified beneficiaries, Tool kit (Water spraying can, Wheelbarrow, Mamoty, Hand Fork,
Jungle knife) will be distributed 25% of identified beneficiaries in 11 districts
which are Kurunegala, Puttalam, Trincomalee, Ampara, Batticaloa, Hambantota,
Monaragala, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu districts and 37
Divisional Secretariat Divisions, 49 Agrarian Service Center Divisions and 256
Grama Niladhari Divisions in the 06 Provinces.
Conclusion
Hotspot
Area agri-food systems are threatened by climate change at a time when demand
for food is increasing and the country’s markets are disrupted by COVID-19 and the
economic crisis. The result is a loss of livelihoods and growing unemployment,
hunger, and malnutrition. Women are disproportionally affected yet have limited
opportunities to participate in adaptation efforts.
Mainstreaming
gender-smart investments in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) presents great
opportunities to mitigate risks, amplify impacts, and reduce gender inequality.
This can better inform investment decisions and identify market opportunities
by focusing on building capacity and increasing access to finance for
women-owned and women-led agricultural small and medium enterprises (SMEs), promoting
gender equality within agribusinesses and across their value chain partners,
and offering products or services which significantly improve the lives of
women and girls.
CSIAP
has identified four key dimensions for promoting gender equality in the context
of CSA: participation in decision-making at the household, community, national
and global levels, Access to, control of, and ability to use productive
resources such as agro-climatic information, technology, credit, and income, Decreased
workloads that free up time and ease physical burdens and collective action is
a platform for women to share information and resources, support each other,
express their voices, and participate in community decision-making.
Successful
mainstreaming of gender-smart CSA investments requires four interdependent
actions:
· CAPACITY BUILDING:
Scaling gender-smart CSA options require building capacities of all actors in
the food ecosystem, including farmers, SMEs, corporations, financiers, and
public bodies – 284 training programs conducted this year.
· GENDER-RESPONSIVE PRODUCTS
AND PROGRAMS: As gender norms and biases exist across societies, organizations,
and systems, gender analyses are needed to identify gaps, develop innovative
products, and transform processes and value chains to foster gender equality – 198
programs have already been implemented from 2019.
· PARTNERSHIPS AND
ENGAGEMENT: Partnerships to leverage resources and knowledge are crucial for
faster collective action.
· SEX-DISAGGREGATED DATA
COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Developing and using sex-disaggregated data is
essential to identify new gender-smart CSA business models and investment
strategies.
Written By:
Sharmila
Shanmuganathan
Gender
Development Officer
Project
Management Unit, CSIAP
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