Women play an outsized role in smallholder agriculture at all levels, from the boardrooms of organizations that finance farms to the fields where women tend their crops alongside their male neighbors. However, women are often overlooked in public and private initiatives aimed at helping farmers. So, how should one design support programs that either include women or that are meant to help women exclusively? A good place to start is to simply ask the very women you are aiming to help.
That’s one of the key messages that came across in the latest installment of Grow Further’s Virtual Speaker Series.
On September 10, Anuska Ratnayake, CEO of Myagro, and Hyma Gollamudi, leader of the TIE Women Initiative, joined us to share their perspectives and answer questions on how they approach helping women smallholder farmers. Their talk was titled “From Soil to Startups: Women Driving Change in Food, Finance & Innovation.”
We received helpful feedback from both Anuska and Hyma, and advice that’s very relevant to Grow Further’s work. And judging by the positive reception from the audience, their words are inspiring and insightful for a wide range of food security practitioners.
Listening to the people you’re trying to help
Anushka, who moved to Kenya many years ago to develop more effective microfinance options for farmers, said she couldn’t stress enough how important “just listening and talking and discussing with farmers” was to Myagro’s success.
By quizzing farmers on what their needs were, Anushka said she quickly discovered that they valued access to secure savings accounts over lending options. “What they were really missing was a safe, secure space to put small amounts of money aside throughout the year,” she recalled. Thus, Myagro subsequently developed financial tools that delivered what the farmers wanted most.
She later extended her work to Mali, following the same philosophy. “It really was rooted in listening to farmers directly,” Anushka said.
Hyma concurred.
Also beginning her career in farm microfinance, Hyma said it took her some time to realize just how much society discriminates against women in the workforce and in agriculture. She says the pervasiveness of this problem took her by surprise early on in her journey. Hyma said she was initially looking into designing effective microfinance solutions for developing countries, “when it kind of dawned upon me how deeply rooted this problem was and the high price that society was paying as a result of this social anomaly.”
“Women seem to be battling the same set of issues across the world,” Hyma lamented.
A problem society must face up to
Hyma and Anushka have achieved great success in their careers despite the obstacles often put in the way of women chasing after their dreams. But it wasn’t easy.
Having gone through a tough road, Hyma argued that fixing the pervasive problem of gender-based discrimination in agricultural support, financing, and the working world in general would require a large-scale, macro-level response, one that’s flexible enough to meet local conditions and realities.
“We’re not the first ones to identify this problem,” Hyma pointed out. There has been a global movement to deliver more support to women smallholder farmers, “but it has been only partially successful,” she added. And there’s plenty of backsliding, she noted—government initiatives set up in one year could be reversed or abandoned the next, depending on the whims of policymakers and society. Hyma characterized the process as she’s witnessed it as “laying the foundation in the morning only to get flooded at night.”
“There has to be a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we approach this problem,” she said.
Anushka agreed but again emphasized the need to incorporate women and women farmers when designing the types of solutions Hyma referred to.
Anushka retold how Myagro succeeded with a marketing campaign designed to boost sales of their sorghum seed and fertilizer packages to smallholder farmers. By asking women sorghum farmers directly, her team discovered that farmers valued the staple crop mostly because it allowed them to feed their children a nutritious breakfast every day. Myagro’s marketing efforts were tailored to highlight this benefit over other traits that may be more appealing to men. She said the campaign was a huge success, “really because women were part of that design process from the very beginning.”
The same will hold for any project or research effort that seeks to directly help women smallholder farmers. “The overall solution is just better,” Anushka said.
A screenshot of the September 10 webinar featuring Anushka Ratnayake (bottom left) and Hyma Gollamudi, Ph.D. (top left). They were joined by Grow Further founder and CEO Peter Kelly (top right) and Grow Further Vice President Venkat Pegadaraju.
“Believe in yourself”
Toward the closing of their talk, Hyma and Anushka were asked what message they would pass on to young women seeking to innovate and make a difference in smallholder agriculture. Both women had the same words of support, with Hyma chiming in first.
“Believe in yourself, push forward, help will come your way,” Hyma said. “Get out of your comfort zone, don’t be afraid, step out, and you will be surprised. You will achieve what you are aspiring to.”
Hyma stressed that support networks are now available to women entrepreneurs and farmers that hadn’t been before. Though the war against gender discrimination is far from over, she said the worst of it is behind us, and there are channels of support. She encouraged women to seek out support networks and to be vocal about what they want to do. “Express what it is that you want, and help will come your way,” Hyma said. She directed the audience to www.tie.org and www.tiewomen.org, sites where aspiring female changemakers can learn more.
Anushka agreed, saying that self-confidence is the very first step.
“I had the same message, believe in yourself,” she said.
She warned that there will be plenty of naysayers, but stressed that women innovators should be confident in themselves, while bearing in mind the need to consult with their would-be customers or clients.
“When you have an idea, it can be scary to take that first step,” Anushka said. “Talk to 30 customers or end users because any good change-making is grounded by working with the people you are aiming to serve.”
— Grow Further
Photo credit: Banner graphic advertising the September 10 Grow Further Virtual Speaker Series event.