Women farmers key in fight against hunger - report

Wed Apr 21, 2010 4:34pm BST

BRUSSELS, April 21 (Reuters) - The European Union and other major aid donors must increase support for small-scale farms operated by women in developing countries if they are to meet the goal of halving hunger by 2015, campaigners ActionAid said on Wednesday.

Small farmers -- the majority of whom are women -- produce about half the world's food supply and 90 percent of all food grown in Africa, ActionAid said in its report "Fertile Ground".

Global aid to small farmers should be increased to $40 billion annually, said the report, which was released the same day the European Commission said it may take steps to force EU governments to meet their aid funding pledges. [ID:nLDE63I0B0]

"Unless national governments and the EU substantially increase their financial commitments it will be impossible to achieve food and nutritional security," ActionAid's EU food rights expert Anne-Catherine Claude said.

Governments in developing countries must also increase their agricultural spending and focus support on the people who do most of the farming, ActionAid said.

"Although women constitute the majority of farmers in most countries and produce most of the locally consumed food in developing countries, nearly all agricultural policies ignore the needs of women," the report added.

Donors say that only about 3.6 percent of their aid is currently spent on agriculture and only 10 percent of that goes to women farmers, ActionAid said.

Under the United Nations' decade-old Millennium Development Goals, all 192 U.N. countries have pledged to halve global hunger by 2015.

But according to the EU executive, the number of people suffering from hunger has risen in recent years to over 1 billion. (Reporting by Charlie Dunmore, Editing by Michael Hogan)



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