Rural Women and Food processing

Food processing Technology"

Rural Women and Food processing

Hala Yousry, PhD

Head of Social Studies Department,
Desert Research Center
February, 4th, 2017
 Introduction
The International Year of Family Farming in 2014 (IYFF-
2014) affords a special opportunity to draw attention to
the role that smallholder farmers and rural people play in
food and nutrition security. International Fund for
Agriculture Development (IFAD) was the first international
agency to formally support the call of civil society and
farmer organizations for a United Nations international
year devoted to family farming. In all its diversity, family
farming is the predominant form of agriculture worldwide.
It plays a major role in supplying the food requirements of
rapidly expanding rural populations, and generates food
and income for hundreds of millions of rural people,
including the poor and marginalized. It creates jobs for
women, men and young people, both within their family
farms and in related enterprises along food and
agricultural value chains.
 Rural Indigenous Knowledge & Practices (IKPs) systems are
territorial treasures, generated by local people that need both
documentation, to assure their territorial rights, and
innovative arrangement to maintain their socio-economic,
cultural and environmental integration.

These systems must be assimilated with contemporary

research agenda and results to enable women, to face socio-
economic challenges and mitigate and adapt to the negative
effects of climate change, as well.

Women, who represent about 43% of the agricultural labour

force in developing countries agriculture, are increasingly
recognized as important actors in these systems. Within the
household, they are responsible for food preparation, food
preservation and food process.
As one of the RIO+20 outcomes:
We reaffirm the vital role of women and the
need for their full and equal participation and
leadership in all areas of sustainable
development, and decide to accelerate the
implementation of our respective
commitments in this regard as contained in the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women, as well as
Agenda 21, the Beijing Declaration and
Platform for Action and the United Nations
Millennium Declaration.
Challenges facing rural communities
Household-level vulnerability is most often associated
with threats to livelihoods.
Either livelihoods are inadequate because of
resource constraints and how productivity (e.g
farmers with too little land and no access to
fertilizer), or livelihood are risky and at risk to
collapse (e.g droughts that cause harvest failure).
Importantly, the majority of food producing
smallholders in many countries are not buyers of
food (an estimated 73% of smallholders in Ethiopia
and 74% in India), which leaves them vulnerable to
both production and market-related risks .
Con. Challenges facing rural communities
Livelihood shocks can affect individuals such
as: illness, accidents, retrenchment, or entire
economies such as: financial crises, natural
disasters, climate change effects, conflicts,
widespread food prices.
Vulnerability can be increased over time if
households face repeated shocks that steadily
eat away their assets.
 Value Chain as a Policy
Value chains and markets Private investment
in agriculture, which has surpassed official
development assistance, is the main engine of
growth for rural economies. Under the right
conditions, it can help raise incomes and
strengthen food security, enabling farmers
especially women to reach markets and gain
access to technology, services, innovation and
knowledge.
 Value Chain as a tool for better
Utilization of Food production
The agricultural value chain concept has been
used since the beginning of the millennium,
primarily by those who are working in
agricultural development in developing
countries. Although there is no universally
accepted definition of the term, it normally
refers to the whole range of goods and
services necessary for an agricultural product
to move from the farm to the final customer
or consumer.
 Value Chain as a system for Food
Processing
The idea of the value chain is based on the
process view of organizations, the idea of seeing
a manufacturing (or service) organization as a
system, made up of subsystems each with inputs,
transformation processes and outputs.
Inputs, transformation processes, and outputs
involve the acquisition and consumption of
resources - money, labour, materials, equipment,
buildings, land, administration and management.
How value chain activities are carried out
determines costs and affects profits.
 A value chain development approach links all
the various steps required to get the product
from the farmer to the consumer. In doing so
it addresses the opportunities and constraints
faced by all actors in the food supply chain
and attempts to improve the final product and
commodity.
 A Value Reference Model (VRM) developed by the trade
consortium Value Chain Group offers a
proprietary information model for value chain
management, encompassing the process domains
of product development, customer relations and supply
networks.
The Value Chain Group claims VRM to be next
generation Business Process Management that enables
value reference modeling of all business processes and
provides product excellence, operations excellence, and
customer excellence.
Five business functions of the value chain:
Research and development
Design of products, services, or processes
Production
Marketing and sales
Distribution
 Traditional Mechanisms for Food Preservation
Animal origin:
Meat Drying: cutting meat in small pieces add salt and curry, dry it
in the sun by day collect it by night till full dryness. Summer time: 7
days, winter time 10 days
Shaking Milk: to separate cream and butter out of milk by shaking
for 10 - 30 minutes . During this process they add salt & Fenugreek
Kishk: Mix Barley and/or wheat flour with shacked milk. They shape
it into small balls and dry them and store them whenever they have
no milk. ( It also shows the rationality in consumption)
Animal Fat: in the past, they use to put animal fats in a big plate add
salt and turmeric. Nowadays, they just melt it and store it.
 Traditional Mechanisms for Food Preservation
Plant origin
Drying: dry leafy vegetables and medical &
aromatic plants ( mint, okra, Artemisia, Thyme)
Salting: using salt as a preservative element
( cucumber, olives, carrots, pepper, rapeseed)
Sugaring: add sugar and heat it for long time and
store it in a dry clean jar ( Figs)
 Gender Role Related to Food and Food Process in a traditional
community
Females Males

Inside the House - Cooking & preparing all - Slaughtering small

ruminants, camels or even
( in-doors) meals.
chickens ( Women
- Raising Chickens traditionally are not
- Feeding in house animals allowed to do this job)
- Breading kids - Sheep shaving
- Men can help cooking but
- Cleaning never wash the dishes
- Food process activities:
pickle and jam
- Carpets and blanket
handmade

- Sheep, goat and camels

Out-side the house - Helping in cultivation and Grazing
( out-doors) harvesting: olives, figs, - Cultivating
- Buying all kinds of food
watermelon and other crops
from market
- Only participating in social - Selling Eggs for women
behalf
occasions for close
- Sheep shaving
neighbor and family - Collecting shrubs using
Cart or donkey.
members
- Have other official jobs
 Recommendations and Action needed
A. For Academia:
These Knowledge and practices should be incorporated into
strategies that would enable the communities to meet nutrition,
food security and livelihood needs in a more sustainable manner
Interdisciplinary researches on indigenous knowledge related to
food should be developed to better utilization of the resources.
B. For Local Government:
There is a need for strategic community-based interventions to
improve food security, nutrition and health.
There is a need to integrate the existing health and nutrition
interventions with traditional food promotion.
Strategies and programs should consider the increase of animal
source foods
C. For Civil Society and other Stakeholders:
Awareness campaign for women should start
with balanced diet out of improved local food
resources.
Recommendations and Action needed
Promoting sustainable agricultural projects and
programs for food security.
Collective approach should be conceded while
planning and implementing developmental
projects.
Seeking funding opportunities that take culture,
norms and beliefs with food security into
consideration.
Making needed information for food security
available and developing women capacities for
better utilization of research outcomes and new
modern adapted technology are two important
elements for sustaining the resources.
 Resource availability does not always reflect resource
sufficiency or utility; therefore, programs should ensure
sketching the available resources first and building on the
existing resource capacities to ensure their sustainability.

More attention should be given to assist and support

women and rural households to become self-sufficient
units based on the potentialities and capabilities of the
local communities in order to have their basic needs met,
as well as overcome the challenge of being socially
isolated/ marginalized at the rural areas.

Promoting family businesses which are considered to be

essential sources of food security and the main providers of
food and job creation especially in the rural areas according
to the comparative and competitive advantages for inputs
and outputs.
For more information please contact me:
halayousryy@hotmail.com
or
halayousry@gmail.com