By the third day of the Rural Women’s Assembly Consultative Dialogue, the room had travelled far. It had begun with seeds: seeds stored in jars, carried through generations and protected by women who refused to let them disappear. It had moved through the climate crisis: droughts, floods, cyclones, hunger, water scarcity and the heavy burden women carry when food systems fail. But on the final day, the conversation moved to another urgent question:
What happens after women have produced the food? Who controls the markets? Who decides the price? Who writes the policies? And who gets to sit at the table when decisions are made?
Day Three was about markets, policy and political power. It was about moving beyond survival and insisting that rural women must have the power not only to grow food, but also to sell it fairly, protect their seeds legally and shape the systems that govern their lives.
When Women Produce the Food but Others Take the Profit
For many rural women, getting food from the field to the market is not simple.
Women may plant, weed, harvest, transport and sell their produce, only to arrive at markets where middlemen, wholesalers and powerful traders control the prices. They may leave home before sunrise, carry food over long distances and pay market levies, yet still return with very little income. The dialogue heard how women farmers often have little bargaining power when they sell their produce. In some markets, middlemen take produce from women farmers and resell it at a much higher price, leaving the women who produced the food with only a small share. The issue was not that women lack markets. The issue was that many markets do not work for women.
Dr. Marc Wegerif encouraged the sisters to strengthen their negotiating position by sharing market information, building collective organisation and identifying markets that offer fairer returns. Women farmers, he argued, need to know where their produce is wanted, what prices are being offered and how they can work together instead of negotiating alone.
The message was simple: information is power. And collective action is power too.
For rural women, strengthening markets means more than selling crops. It means investing in local public markets, value addition, storage, transport, food processing and women-led trading networks. It means ensuring that women do not have to sell their tomatoes, sorghum, millet, vegetables or indigenous foods at the lowest possible price simply because they have no other option. It also means changing the way people think about local food. For too long, indigenous foods have been treated as poor people’s food, while processed and imported foods are seen as modern, desirable or superior. The dialogue challenged this thinking. Rural women spoke about the need to decolonise the mind and reclaim the value of the food that has nourished communities for generations. Indigenous food is not backward.
Seed Policy: Recognition Is Not Enough
The conversation then returned to seeds, but this time through the lens of law, policy and power.
Mariam Mayet from the African Centre for Biodiversity spoke about the African Union’s proposed policy and strategy on farmer-managed seed systems. At first glance, the policy appears to recognise the importance of farmer-managed seed systems and the central role women play in protecting them.
But the sisters were asked to look deeper. Recognition is not the same as protection. A policy can acknowledge rural women as seed custodians while still failing to protect their right to save, exchange, multiply and sell seed. It can speak positively about farmer-managed seed systems while quietly bringing them into systems that are controlled by corporations, seed companies and international certification standards. The concern raised during the session was that without strong legal protections, farmer-managed seed systems could be documented, regulated, captured and eventually controlled by others.
Mariam warned that the policy did not clearly guarantee farmers’ rights to seed, nor did it provide strong safeguards against laws that criminalise seed sharing and exchange. She also raised concern about the growing digitalisation of seed systems, where farmers’ knowledge, seed data and biodiversity can be collected and controlled through platforms that do not belong to the communities themselves. The dialogue called for consultation before the policy is adopted and for stronger engagement at SADC level. Sisters were urged not to accept policy language that sounds good on paper but leaves women without real legal rights on the ground. Because farmer-managed seed systems are not dead collections of grain.They are living systems, women’s knowledge, community relationships,culture, biodiversity and food sovereignty.
Read her full presentation here
Power in Numbers, A Call for Women’s Leadership
Virginia Muwanigwa of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, brought the conversation back to a question that sat beneath every discussion on markets, land, seed and policy: who has the power to decide? She began by recognising rural women as the people who are holding food security together, even while their work remains under recognised and under-supported. She challenged the assumption that simply giving women “access” to land, markets or programmes is enough. Access, she argued, does not automatically mean power. Women may be allowed onto land, into a market or into a policy meeting, but still have little control over the resources, decisions and benefits that follow.
Her message was clear: rural women must not only be invited into systems designed by others. They must be in leadership.
Virginia questioned who is shaping African Union frameworks, who decides who sits at the table, and whether the money allocated to agroecology is reaching the women who are already doing the work. “Participation is important,” she said. “Who informs the frameworks? Who was at the table? Who decides who comes?”
She reminded the sisters that their strength lies in their collective numbers. Markets, she explained, are made up of people, and rural women are not a small minority within them. They are producers, buyers, caregivers, traders, seed keepers and community organisers. Their collective presence can shape the kind of markets and food systems that are built.
“Sisters and brothers, we have power,” she told the room. “Sometimes we say we don’t. Our power lies in numbers.”
Virginia also made a powerful call for people to support women producers in practical ways, including by buying from women and refusing to push them below fair prices. She challenged policies that treat rural women as labourers or beneficiaries instead of recognising them as economic actors whose knowledge, production and contribution sustain households and communities.
Her presentation gave Day Three a deeper political meaning. The struggle is not only for women to enter markets. It is for women to influence the rules of those markets. It is not only for women to be consulted on policy. It is for women to lead in shaping it. Because when rural women organise, stay united and claim their place in leadership, their knowledge can no longer be ignored.
Read a detailed session with government officials and parliamentarians.
A Declaration From the Women Themselves
The dialogue closed not with a speech from above, but with a declaration shaped by the rural women themselves. Over three days, rural women had shared their stories, challenged policy makers, questioned funding systems, reflected on climate injustice and affirmed their own knowledge. They had named what is broken. But more importantly, they had named what must be built. The Rural Women’s Assembly Declaration on Agroecology carried the collective voice of women who are already feeding their communities, conserving biodiversity, building seed banks, restoring soils, sharing knowledge and responding to climate shocks. Read the Declaration Here.
