Deep Roots

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In India the women’s organization, the Tamil Nadu

Women’s Forum (TNWF) and its support group, the Society

for Education and Rural Development (SRED) worked with

Dalit women (the most marginalized group of women under

India’s caste system) to assert their rights to land. In one

area in Andhra Pradesh, Dalit women organized themselves

with the help of TNWF and SRED to petition for land to the

government land office. The women were initially either

ignored or repeatedly told to just return. One government

official even asked for sexual favours from the petitioning

women. The women responded by getting the official into a

room and hitting him with slippers. Finally after many years

of petitioning, campaigning and demonstrating in front of the

government offices, 30 women were given land titles and after

continued struggles they were also given financial support

to improve their lands. Ten of them decided with the help

of TNWF and SRED to undertake collective farming and are

continuously trained on ecological methods of cultivation.

They have had a number of successful agricultural seasons.

With the land and its produce the women’s food security needs

are being met and they are more confident. This has motivated

them to stand for local election and two of the women have

now been elected into the local panchayat committee.

PAN AP’s capacity building sessions in Sarawak, Malaysia

help equip indigenous communities with skills to map and

document their native customary lands. Without access

to land, the survival of the indigenous community and its

people is in jeopardy. The indigenous communities used this

documentation for legal cases to assert their rights over land

(recognized in Sarawak’s legal system as Native Customary

Rights of indigenous communities). PAN AP’s trainings were

an important contribution to the indigenous communities

securing access to their land, which means securing their live-

lihoods and ensuring food and nutrition security. There are

now 400 legal cases in the courts in Sarawak that have been

brought by indigenous communities to assert their rights over

land that has been given to logging and palm oil corporations.

In one community in Sarawak, the impact of the docu-

mentation and mapping training was immediate. The

documentation was used in the filing of the community’s case

against a palm oil company. However, even before the start of

the hearing, the company involved learned that the commu-

nity was organized and had received training. It decided to

stop its encroachment into the native land and then opted

for an out-of-court settlement and eventually compensated

the community.

To build on such successes and to create more awareness,

PAN AP has organized a series of campaign activities tagged

‘Women asserting their rights to land and resources includ-

ing seeds’ which has been ongoing in the last four years. This

year, groups in eight countries in Asia and Africa simultane-

ously held mass actions and other activities to highlight the

struggles on International Women’s Day. Several days later,

representatives from PAN AP and ARWC were in Mongolia

to emphasize women’s issues during the discussions on

family farming at the FAO Regional Conference for Asia

Pacific. These actions for the campaign will continue during

Rural Women’s Day on 15 October with more groups joining

the campaign.

Biodiversity-based ecological agriculture

PAN AP has been both contributing to the discussions on

expanding the concept of family farming and undertaking

efforts to support gender justice and promote biodiversity-

based ecological agriculture (BEA) within the context of

family farms.

For family farming to survive and to prosper there is a need

to mainstream BEA. This has been emphasized by the United

Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier

de Schutter in his report of 2010 when he asserts that the

ecological systems employed by smallholder farmers and rural

women are key to food security and are vital in ensuring their

right to food. These systems also protect the environment and

are economically feasible. The report identifies agroecology

as a science and practice that has fast concretized the right to

food for many vulnerable groups.

The commemoration of IYFF should provide impetus for

putting in place policies and programmes that stimulate the

widespread adoption of BEA to meet the future challenges

of food production and distribution. These polices should

promote the conservation of biodiversity and encourage local

seed banks. Decentralized participatory research that builds

on farmers’ and local knowledge systems should be funded

and institutionalized, and the approach of farmer-scientist

partnerships should be emulated.

These BEA models supported by civil society organiza-

tions are in widespread practice. For example, 20,000 rice

farmers with Kudumbam practice low external-input sustain-

able agriculture in Tamilnadu; 56,000 rice farmers with the

Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation

practice a non-chemical system of rice intensification in

Cambodia and around 35,000 BEA rice farmers use the

Masipag approach, a farmer-scientist collaboration for rice

breeding and ecological agriculture in the Philippines.

Advancing family farming

We reiterate that the bold policy statements this year on family

farming have to be translated into political will for change that

includes strong support for women’s rights and empowerment

and BEA to ensure food for all.

PAN AP is committed to contribute to this process as it has

built strong partnerships with peasants, agricultural workers

and rural women’s movements in the Asia Pacific region. PAN

AP now comprises 108 network partners in the region with

links with about 400 civil society and grass-roots organiza-

tions at regional and global levels. Our greatest strength and

most powerful resource is the network of people’s organi-

zations, particularly of marginalized communities that also

represent diverse movements and organizations.

This year we have the opportunity to ensure that the

objectives of the IYFF – particularly raising awareness for

family farming that includes gender equality and for safe

food, healthy environment, and food security and sover-

eignty – are achieved. PAN AP pledges its full support to the

realization of these objectives. The strengthening of family

farming, achieving women’s empowerment and the adoption

and propagation of BEA require that institutions and agen-

cies that have similar vision and genuine support for family

farming must work and collaborate together.

eep

oots