Blog

Good Food comes from Good Seeds.

STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Rural Women’s Assembly  Statement 

International Rural Women’s Day and World Food Day Statement 

Theme: “Good food comes from good seeds!”

Date 13 October 2021
Release: Immediately
        ____________________________________________________________

This year we want to mark both World Food Day and International Rural Women\’s Day by saying that more than 50 years ago the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations proclaimed World Food Day to raise awareness of the fact that millions of poor people go to bed hungry daily. In fact, we are told that presently the number of hungry people is 870 million and they are mainly in the rural areas. The bulk of which are women and children. This is against the fact that women constitute 60 to 70% of the agricultural labourers, they are the processors of food and cookers of the food that the world eats.

For the Rural Women’s Assembly, it is not a day of celebration, instead, it’s a day in which we want to shame the governments, the institutions that allow this level of poverty, inequality and hunger to co-exist with obscene wealth and waste. We are also told that in 1980, the General Assembly of the UN-endorsed observance of the day in consideration of the fact that \”food is a requisite for human survival and well-being and a fundamental human necessity\” (resolution 35/70 of 5 December).

But what has changed over these years? Each year the UN tells us that more people go to bed hungry and each year the UN and its institutions organise meetings that set new goals and SDGs to combat poverty and hunger. 

This year the UNFSS (UN Food Systems Summit) that took place in September 2021 in New York, was a clear indication that the UN does not believe that the millions of rural women and peasants that contribute daily to household and country-level food security, have the capacity to feed themselves. 

The RWA is a movement of African farmers, peasants, smallholders, fisherwomen and farmworkers who argue that if they are supported with related resources- land, water, markets, financial resources and the policy environment is conducive, they have the potential to make a change! If their Farmer Managed Seed System (FMSS); their farmer seeds and the biodiversity are protected and resourced – they can make a difference. But instead, the UNFSS promotes industrial agriculture as the “saviours” of global hunger. We have 50years of evidence and as well the deepening hunger that was visible during COVID to suggest that the global food system has created poverty, ill-health and climate crisis! 

We cannot be silent, as the RWA we demand urgent change that puts people before profits, we want to be well and we want to defend the climate and advance food sovereignty, seed sovereignty and living simply but with wellness and without hunger. 

We, the rural women members of the Rural Women’s Assembly, have spoken.