Here is our video feature on two keynote speakers from yesterday's opening, former colleagues Brave Ndisale and Shenggen Fan, who so kindly found some time for us amidst their busy schedules. The talk was about women in food systems and the interplay of international organizations after a fairly discussed opening ceremony.

Brave Ndisale, FAO

In our earlier post, we highlighted the subject of gender and land tenure as discussed by the Tropentag keynote speaker, Brave Ndisale. A gathering of researchers and development practitioners also presented research posters addressing issues of gender and land tenure, value chains, and collective action drawing from case studies in Nigeria, Sudan, Ecuador, Kenya, Uganda and Ghana. Continue...

“Gender” has become quite a buzzword in development circles these days. This is increasingly evident with prominent publications by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the emergence of the new UN Women. Though at the moment this topic may be en vogue, the long-time neglected issues related to gender are important blocks missing in the bridge from agricultural research to practice. It was therefore encouraging to see several posters at this year’s Tropentag conference conveying the multi-faceted nature of gender-sensitive approaches and issues. (Continue...)

‘It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?’ Virginia Woolf is quite right, as was reflected in Breakout Session 7, exploring links between nutrition, health and the female domains of subsistence farming. In the latter, inequality persists in unequal opportunities, low representation of women in leadership and in continuing violence against women in all its forms. Two out of three illiterate adults are women. Every 90 seconds, a woman dies in pregnancy. And even though the figure of women accounting for 80% of agricultural production, while owning less than 2% of land, is now contested, women clearly contribute to agriculture and nutrition quite differently than men. Obviously, 'The playing field needs to be leveled'. Read more