kathe_kollwitz Sythe

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its 2011 State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report this week, just in time for today's International Women's Day. The report illustrates how better investments in female farmers would prevent malnourishment in 100-150 million people, because of the ways women are likely to allocate resources in a food-shortage-threatened world.

"The report shows the hard economic numbers behind a message we've known for a long time, which is that women are crucial for agricultural security,"
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Mama comes on a Tractor

from Gallery of Chinese Propaganda Posters (1925-2006)

200 Highlights from the collections of the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, and Stefan R. Landsberger (University of Amsterdam, Leiden University).

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More than profit ; women value conservation

Cultivation practices to minimise erosion, sustainable rotations, buffers along waterways...these are a few of the conseration practices that Iowa women landowners (and there are a significant number) are demanding of their (typically) male farmer tenants.
Read the CSMonitor story Women Leading a Farming Revolution in Iowa

Deccan Development Society

During my stay in India I walked into the Taj to have a look see and it was an opulent intense contrast to the poverty on the streets a few steps beyond the Red turbaned doormen. Flaming now... just one way to destabilize an India in resurgence, who could possibly want to do that. I feel sad today for the violence in India and share here a link to a very powerful group of women, The Deccan Development Society who for two decades have organized thousands of very poor women at the village level to empower their voices and their access to resources, particularly sustenance. Seed security has become the key issue in recent years and the fight to preserve and protect traditional seed from transgenic contamination and corporate control. Be sure to visit their great website that is full of resources and links to their inspiring fight against the destabilization of India's rich agricultural traditions and the empowerment of the Dalit.