"I have seen the future, and the future is bicycles!"
Bicycles and the wealth of nations
The busiest people in the world
New hope for Jesús (and others)
By William Grisley
Seven thousand six hundred and twenty tons of agricultural commodities transported by bicycle: it must be Asia! But no, this is happening in Uganda, an East African country where the importance of bicycles as a means of transport for small-scale farmers is increasing dramatically. Bikes now dominate in the transportation of agricultural commodities produced within a 35-kilometre radius of selected retail markets around the capital city of Kampala.
This is a striking and important new development for small farmers and consumers in sub-Saharan Africa - and the implications for agricultural and rural development are immense: a cheap, efficient and reliable source of transportation is crucial to any productive agricultural sector.
Familiar in Asia
The importance of bicycles to agriculture and rural development is well-known in many Asian countries. Bicycles have long been a familiar part of the landscape, and are the primary means of transport for agricultural inputs and outputs for many small-scale farmers.
Why - until now - hasn't the bicycle become the "beast of burden" for agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa as it has in Asia? Tradition is, of course, a crucial reason. But perhaps of more importance are the development policies being pursued in the region. Governments and donors alike have relied upon the gasoline - or diesel-powered truck, most often imported and requiring hard currency for payment, as the only solution to the agricultural transport problem. Small has rarely been beautiful when it comes to transport in sub-Saharan Africa.
This may now be changing, at least in Uganda, but only slowly, and then only through the initiative of private, small-scale businessmen. Governments and donors need to become more aware of what these small business people have accomplished, and to develop strategies to complement their efforts. When it comes to farm products, cyclists in Uganda have shown small can not only be profitable, but also friendly to the environment.
It's not easy work being a bicycle transporter in Uganda. Ask any of the 275 bicycle riders who make their way daily along the Bombo Road to the large retail market at Kwempe, near Kampala. "You can ride downhill, but must push going up," explained one rider as he stopped to pay the unpopular road user's tax. (And here is an obvious first step for government: eliminate the road user's tax on bicycles, and thus en- courage their use.) Nor is the riders' load light. In a recent survey, load size averaged 76 kilograms across all commodities carried. The distance travelled wasn't short, either: 35 kilometres on average. That's a lot of pedalling and pushing to earn a daily living.
But within the radius of retail markets cyclists have little to fear from truck transporters. Trucks, even small pick-ups, are not economically competitive with bicycles in this peri-urban area of small farmers. Bicycle businessmen not only pay cash for farm products, an important consideration for small farmers, but also provide the much-needed market information on which small-scale commercial production depends. For small farmers, the news carried by the large number of cyclists coming back from the market daily is often as important as the products carried to market. A limited number of truck drivers could never play this important information dissemination role.
A lot of food
A wide variety of products move by bicycle down the Bombo Road, one of seven major arteries leading into Kampala. The quantity of important non-food items transported by bicycle annually includes 2 134 tons of charcoal, 1 043 tons of firewood and 300 tons of banana leaves. Important food items carried by bike include 1 778 tons of fresh cassava, 365 tons of sweet potatoes, 303 tons of tomatoes, 255 tons of fresh beans, 254 tons of mangoes, 193 tons of bananas, 167 tons of cabbage, 76 tons of green vegetables, 67 tons of sugar cane, 65 tons of eggplant, 43 tons of white potatoes, 36 tons of onions and 18 tons of avocado.
That's a lot of food. And what's more impressive is that it's fresh. Wholesalers, retailers and consumers have come to rely on cyclists to deliver marketable products on a regular and timely basis.
Cyclists don't linger at the market; they are not market wholesalers or retailers.
They sell their load and return to make purchases for the next day. It's a competitive business, and to earn a living they must make daily purchases from farmers and keep their bicycles moving.
Not to be left unrecorded are the 262 756 litres of banana beer - known locally as tonto - which is brewed by small farmers. That's a lot of tonto. It's a traditional and popular "strong" drink in this part of Uganda. For tonto drinkers, freshness is everything and the beer arrives fresh daily, carried by the ever-reliable bicycle. Bicycle riders have even been known to take a calabash or two of tonto after a long trip. After a 35 km or more trip in the hot sun, who can blame them!
Of the 31 major commodities found to be transported down the Bombo Road by all vehicle types, bicycles carried 40 per cent or more of all commodities. This is a major accomplishment for a small-scale part of the transport sector that grew of its own ac- cord, which is also a significant creator of jobs. A labor-intensive industry of self-employed riders, bicycle transport is also an important source of income for the many small retail shops located along the Bombo Road that sell bike parts and make repairs.
Potentially, the volume of commodities carried by 275 bicycles daily along the Bombo Road could be transported in 21 pick-up truck-size loads, requiring perhaps as few as seven pick-up trucks working full time. Employment creation is thus an important and much-needed contribution of the bicycle sector.
Bikes also save valuable foreign ex- change, a scarce entity in most sub-Saharan African countries. The 275 bicycles now in daily use along the Bombo Road cost about as much as a single pick-up truck. More importantly, they don't require regular sup- plies of expensive imported fuel, oil and spare parts.
Motorized transportation also has additional foreign exchange requirements in the form of imported machinery, equipment and materials for road construction and maintenance. The foreign exchange costs of these items can be significant, often requiring large grants or other forms of assistance from the international donor community.
Environmentally friendly
Bicycles are also more friendly to the environment than motorized vehicles, a consideration of growing importance. In addition to the fact that fuel is not required, bicycles can operate on small, community- developed roads and paths that are impassable to motorized vehicles. Compared to a road network that would be required for motorized vehicles, the paths used by cyclists are a significant savings in land area. This is no small matter in the densely populated areas found around the urban centres of most sub-Saharan African countries.
Of greater concern to the environment are the often-severe erosion problems associated with road construction and maintenance. These can largely be avoided when roads and paths are designed for bicycles. Road maintenance, a serious and increasingly unmanageable problem over much of sub-Saharan Africa, will also be less costly on bicycle pathways.
Another major contribution of bicycles is that they make it possible for large numbers of small-scale farmers along the Bombo Road to engage in commercial production. Without the bicycle, small-scale farmers in this region wouldn't be able to pro- duce small volumes of highly perishable commercial crops. Even if a more elaborate road network existed, it would be risky and uneconomical for truckers to purchase small quantities of perishable products and carry them to markets. Cyclists can take these risks because their scale of transport is similar to the scale of production of most small-scale farmers. Truckers requiring tons of produce to get a load are not interested in purchasing 50-75 kg from a small farmer. It isn't difficult to see that small- scale production and small-scale transportation complement each other.
Farmers along the Bombo Road now produce cash crops, because they know bicycle transporters will be on the spot when crops are ready for harvest. In fact, cyclists regularly survey farmers' gardens, waiting for that right opportunity to make a purchase and deliver it to the market. And buying from the small-scale farmer is competitive. The large number of bicycle transporters ensures that farmers will get the best possible price. Such competitiveness rarely occurs when there are only a few truckers in the market.
The presence of cyclists also allows small farmers to develop cropping systems that are more productive, profitable and sustainable. Access to the market allows production of a large number of both annual and perennial crops, many of which are produced in diverse intercropping systems. Diversity in crop production usually means an increase in the sustainability of both the cropping and farming system, and an in- crease in income for the household.
A bicycle-friendly system
Cyclists aren't found plying all the major roads into Kampala. The main reason why, according to cyclists, is the traffic congestion caused by the ever-growing number of cars, trucks and buses, which crowd out bicycles. It's unsafe, and often physically impossible for heavily loaded bicycles to enter the city on narrow and heavily congested roads.
Access to an uncongested road is critical to the success of bicycle transport on the Bombo Road. However, if development proceeds and provision is not made for their safe movement, bicycle transporters: could also find this route closed. A key to a successful bicycle transport sector is a friendly road system, and governments can actively promote the development of a bicycle transportation system for small-scale farm producers in peri-urban areas by assuring ease of access to markets.
Getting : a bicycle transport industry started isn't that difficult: avoid biasing agricultural transport policy against bicycles, and the industry will develop on its own. No government bureaucracy or parastatal staff is required. Development can be speeded simply by providing a few incentives, such as accessible roads in areas with otherwise heavy motorized traffic, open import policies for bicycles and spare parts, and an open and fair marketplace for agricultural commodities. Once cyclists are established in densely populated peri-urban markets, truckers will find it impossible to drive them out. This will be to the benefit of all.
Bicycles may not be the solution to every transport problem in sub-Saharan Africa, but they can certainly be part of the answer. Bulky items and distantly produced commodities can't be transported by bicycle, but even in distant production areas bikes may find a role in carrying products to centrally located transshipment points. To some degree, such a system is already in use in many parts of Africa. If allowed to develop, bicycle transport can complement motorized vehicles and rail-roads in carrying the continent's farm products.
William Grisley is an agricultural economist with many years' experience in Africa.
Nile perch on its way to market, near Entebbe, Uganda (Photo by Kate Dunn)
By Jane Jacobs
How bikes gave a tiger its tail
In her 1985 book. Cities and the wealth of nations, Canadian economic and social critic Jane Jacobs discussed the small business and manufacturing components that make cities, and the national economies they sustain, successful. She saw the humble bicycle - especially the home-built variety - as playing a key part in the scheme of things.
Economic life develops by grace of innovating; it expands by grace of import-replacing. These two master economic processes are closely related, both being functions of city economies. Further- more, successful import-replacing often entails adaptations in design, materials or methods of production, and these require innovating and improvising, especially of producers' goods and services....
Cities that replace imports significantly replace not only finished goods but, concurrently, many items of producers' goods and services. They do it in swiftly emerging, logical chains. For example, first comes the local processing of fruit preserves that were formerly imported, then the production of jars or wrappings formerly imported for which there was no local market of producers until the first step had been taken. Or first comes the assembly of formerly imported pumps for which, once the assembly step has been taken, parts are imported; then the making of parts for which metal is imported; then possibly even the smelting of metal for these and other import replacements. The process pays for itself as it goes along. When Tokyo went into the bicycle business, first came repair work cannibalizing imported bicycles, then manufacture of some of the parts most in demand for repair work, then manufacture of still more parts, finally assembly of whole, Tokyo-made bicycles. And almost as soon as Tokyo began exporting bicycles to other Japanese cities, there arose in some of those customer cities much the same process of replacing bicycles imported from Tokyo, rather than from abroad, as had (historically) happened with many items sent from city to city in the United States....
Not only did Japan acquire bicycle manufacturing and develop its own producers' goods for the purpose as it went along, it also acquired an improvised method for reproducing other types of complex imported goods symbiotically in groups of individually small and simple factories, a method put to use for manufacturing sewing-machines, for example, and later radios and electrical goods. A modern derivative of the system, used by the great Nissan automobile works with its close clusters of suppliers who make daily and even hourly deliveries of what is needed for assembly at the time, has recently become the subject of much study and admiration on the part of American industrialists.
At the time when the Japanese developed their own bicycle manufacturing, the bicycles they imported were being made in highly integrated, huge, complete factories in America, as the sewing-machines also were. Had the Japanese tried to import complete factories for these purposes, whether by buying them outright or obtaining them on credit, they would have lost the opportunity to develop their own producers' goods and production methods, and the bicycles, sewing-machines, and so on, would have been more expensive as well, probably too expensive for the Japanese to buy. In- stead, they used their trade with currently more advanced economies only as a springboard for their own development.
Cities and the wealth of nations, by Jane Jacobs, is available from Vintage Books, a division of Random House Inc., 11th Floor, 201 East 50th St., New York. N.Y. 10022, U.S.A.
It makes sense for extension to target 50 per cent of the planet's population
By Kate Dunn
Fetch water. Grind corn. Feed the baby. Fetch firewood. Work the fields. Head to market, to buy and sell. Hoe the garden. Wash and mend. Feed the family, three times a day. Tend the sick. Knit and weave, spin and sew and sow...
"Poor female farmers are probably the busiest people in the world," says the 1993 FAO report Agriculture extension and farm women in the 1980s. Yet somehow they also find time to grow at least half the world's food, assuming the burdens of planting, transplanting, weeding, thinning, threshing and harvesting, marketing and livestock care. In Africa, "women contribute two-thirds of all hours spent in traditional agriculture and three-fifths of the hours spent in marketing," according to the report of a 1987 FAO workshop in Zimbabwe.
It makes sense for extension services to help improve the efficiency of the woman farmer/homemaker. But years of lip-service to the need for more extension services for women have yielded few results. While half the world's food is grown by women, 95 per cent of agricultural extension services are directed at men, according to a 1989 FAO survey. Only 15 per cent of extension agents are women.
"Overall, the need for extension training to reach female farmers is acknowledged," consultant Vicki Wilde noted in her 1993 report. Agricultural extension and farm women in the 1980s. "Recognized need, however, is insufficient," she added, arguing that extension policies, now designed to favor farmers with large holdings, should be directed to small farmers in general, "and that both female and male farmers will be targeted for participation, as appropriate to their roles in agricultural development."
A four-country study of extension services for women, by André Mayer research fellow Manju Dutta Das, found not one had an agricultural extension policy clearly identifying women farmers as a specific target clientele. "When countries do not have a clearly stated agricultural extension policy for women farmers, donors' recommended gender approaches may not be effectively applied for the achievement of countries' long-term agricultural development goals," wrote Das.
The situation is critical. The world's population is to grow by 50 per cent by the early part of the next millennium, and food crises will only be exacerbated as attempts to feed all those mouths lead to further degradation of farmland through inappropriate agricultural practices and deforestation. Migration of rural men to work in cities, and increasing levels of family breakup in developing countries mean women are making an ever-growing number of crucial decisions on the farm. If women are going to farm well and be more productive, they're going to have to farm "smarter." So far, they're getting very little help.
According to Das 1993-94 study, women get cut out of extension programs because they don't own land; because they have no access to credit for the inputs promoted by extensionists; because they are not perceived as being responsible for cash crops and livestock which are often the extensionist's key interests, and because they often cannot read or count.
"As a matter of practice, most public extension organizations identify target clientele on the basis of land and other economic resources," according to the Wilde report. "It appears that technology transfer goals, particularly to the commercial farm sector, are given priority over broader rural development concerns."
Using sub-Saharan Africa as an example, Das adds: "Timetables (for training) take no account of women's chores such as looking after children, cooking, cutting wood and fetching water. In many countries cultural or religious factors play an important part in preventing women from receiving training. Trainers and agricultural extension agents are usually male and thus may not speak to, or get close to women. This is especially true in Muslim countries (CTA, 1993)."
Times and family structures are changing, however. In Africa, generally 35 per cent of households are now headed by women as a result of migration, death, divorce or abandonment. "In Yemen," writes Das, "male emigration is particularly heavy, where an eighth of the population works in paid employment elsewhere. The women left behind have had to assume the agricultural duties of the absent husbands and, as direct recipients of remittances, have greater decision-making power than would be expected in an Islamic country." In Syria, she adds, "traditionally, women had no definite decision-making role in the majority of family affairs because of the dominance of male members in the joint family system. The situation now seems to have changed owing to the disintegration of this family system in the rural areas."
In particular, women want labor-saving technologies to cut their household and farm burdens, but are not perceived by extension services as appropriate technology-transfer targets. "Government officers (in Thailand's extension service) claim that women are not interested in new technology, while according to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the number of women candidates always exceeds the capacity of their training budget," wrote Das.
Percentage of time and resources allocated to clientele groups by extension organizations, by region...
|
Clientele groups |
Africa |
Asia & the Pacific |
Europe |
Latin America |
North America |
Near East |
|
Commercial farmers |
20 |
36 |
69 |
42 |
48 |
31 |
|
Commodity producers |
26 |
17 |
5 |
24 |
1 |
34 |
|
Subsistence farmers |
311 |
28 |
2 |
18 |
1 |
14 |
|
Landless producers |
1 |
4 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
5 |
|
Young farmers/rural youth |
10 |
8 |
7 |
5 |
16 |
2 |
|
Women farmers |
7 |
3 |
3 |
5 |
1 |
9 |
|
Home economics |
1 |
2 |
4 |
- |
9 |
1 |
|
Other groups |
4 |
2 |
9 |
4 |
23 |
4 |
|
Total percentage |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Source: FAO, 1990.
Note: N = number of respondent organizations; missing = 75.
Regional proportion of reported FAO trainees by sex in 1991, by percentage
Many extension services believe that in educating the husband, they're educating the whole household, wife included, but that's not the case. Das found a very low percentage of women farmers received agricultural advice from their husbands: from 7.5 to 13.5 per cent in Syria, Nigeria and Thailand. Things were better in Trinidad, where the figure was 40 per cent.
Das noted: "This finding does not agree with the statement of development planners that 'information given to male farmers will be passed along to other farming members of the household' (Santo and Weidemann, 1990). On the other hand, it is correlated with the findings of Fortmann (1978) and Spring (1985) who indicate that agricultural knowledge acquired by males often does not "trickle across' to females in the family."
It has been shown that female extensionists are more effective than men in working with women farmers. According to Das, "Trinidad had 31 per cent female agricultural extension agents, 28 per cent in Thailand, 14 per cent in Syria and 0.62 per cent in Nigeria'. "Of those female extensionists, 21 per cent of the Nigerians and 15 per cent of the Thais were home economists, few of whom touch on larger farm activities. Das found in Thailand the field extension staff did not follow through on commitments to backstop the economists on agricultural questions.
"There are simply not enough extensionists to go around, male or female," said Wilde in an interview. "We can't wait for there to be enough women extensionists. Men can learn to work with women. All it takes is for the lightbulb to come on, in terms of understanding the contribution women make and their capacities to learn."
Success stories ate there. "Evidence from Nigeria and Kenya, for example, indicates that some male agents prefer working with female farmers because women perform roost of the farming tasks anyway and are more likely to follow the extensionists' advice," Wilde's report noted.
"Indeed, the World Bank has found that women are more likely to be selected as contact farmers if the criteria for selection emphasize farming ability.
"Women have considerable access to mainstream agricultural training in the case-study extension programs (the 1989 FAO survey) from Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand and Brazil. In addition, extension programs studied in Cameroon, China, Colombia, Cyprus, Mali, Peru, Rwanda and Senegal all include female clientele to a degree far above the average suggested by the global data."
Despite constraints, these invisible farmers still manage to feed the world - barely. Hunger won't be eliminated until their burdens are lightened and they are allowed access to and ownership of resources to increase food production in sustainable ways.
Kate Dunn is associate editor of Ceres
The campesinas of Honduras are students and village teachers at the same time
By Patricia Baeza-Lopez
In both name and attitude, Jesús Neuva Esperanza (Jesús New Hope) defies the dry, ochre-colored land surrounding the vivid green lot where she lives in Honduras. A vegetable garden, trees pushing to the sky and a chicken coop with built-in manure box are the proud results of her determination to improve income, food supply and family nutrition. In her village of 140 souls, she is both learner and teacher.
To raise small stock, plant trees and sow a garden in the district of Valle has been no easy task for the 45-year-old campesina. Deforestation has encouraged chronic drought in the region, turning the land into some of the poorest of Honduras, To find water, wood, or lush foliage here is like finding an emerald on the moon. Over the course of the century this region, in the arid tropics along the Pacific coastline, has been despoiled of its forest land, including its best timber-yielding trees. People go hungry while the cleared land is used for cattle-grazing and for cotton crops rapidly being replaced by melons for export.
The task of resurrecting Valle and its neighboring district of Choluteca, which together afford the country's sole access to the Pacific, is slow and has involved a variety of development initiatives.
Women key
Studies show that when grain grown by men is in short supply, income contributed by Honduran women in cash or kind from eggs, cheese, fresh and processed fruit, vegetables and small stock constitutes families' primary source of food. This is particularly true in a region whose scanty basic staple: sorghum.
Despite the oft-repeated truism that women are key to food security and sustainable development, few activities of regional and national scope in this part of Honduras have been directed specifically toward Strengthening women's productive role in the rural economy and in food security.
Another truism is that top-down development doesn't work - the more grassroots the approach, the better. Out of respect for these truisms came a training program for women such as Nueva Esperanza, in which they serve as village-based "Food Production-Liaisons" (PREN - in the Spanish acronym). It is their responsibility to diffuse, with other local women, agricultural knowledge and production techniques that better assure household and community food security. Organizing the women for cooperative activities is a prime goal.
"In the mountain village of Comayagua, a pilot intervention (with the training program) decreased the number of malnutrition children by 90 per cent," according to the FAO publication Extension woman to woman: training peasant women liaisons to reach peasant women. The impact was best expressed by Ana Mercedes Montoya, the oldest member of the group which selected Jesús as their liaison: "We sorted out knowing nothing, but what we have now learned can't be taken away from us."
Initiated in 1986 with the financial support of the government of the Netherlands, the FAO's Promotion and Training Program for Women's Integration in Rural Development has been overseen by two national organizations. Originally there were 88 Food Production Liaisons nationwide. The number then levelled off to 60 due to desertion brought about by maternity, emigration, shallow roots in the community, or problems within the family or community. Currently there are some 120 liaisons directly supporting roughly 1 200 women in five districts. Many of the latter will eventually become trainers themselves.
The FAO-Honduras project grew from a 1983-86 joint FAO/UN Development Programme project designed for the women of recipient families of the country's agrarian reform. Its aim was to provide technical training and implement a rotating fund for small production projects.
However, only five per cent of project funds were for women's training, which inhibited overall success. Both Honduran and international officials stressed the need to create a new project to meet the specific educational and organizational needs of women. With extensionists as facilitators and lead trainers, the new project was designed as a total structure, each liaison training program building a foundation for the next.
First, the women had to organize in local groups, with some chosen as group organizers; then, from their midst, they chose reading and writing instructors (male and female); domestic and environmental producers; and finally, food production liaisons.
Illiteracy stows progress
The first major obstacle was the high rate of illiteracy (52.6 per cent) among rural women Also, given their household burdens, women lacked the time and sometimes energy for training. Then there was family opposition to women's participation.
The woman chosen as campesina liaison had to be deeply rooted in her community, with strong leadership qualities, at least a third-grade education, and willing to volunteer her services. Extensionists met with the spouse or father of each would-be liaison, to explain the benefits to the family and community from the woman's participation.
Jesús Nueva Esperanza managed to gain her husband's support. He didn't object to switching from home-made tortillas to store-bought white bread so she could go to the Food Production Liaisons' training courses.
In the neighboring district of Choluteca, Rosa Orellana of the village of Linaca counted on the support of the 14 other women who nominated her as the liaison trainee. "They took turns preparing my husband's meals and doing my household chores," she explained. "At first he objected. but he gradually got used to it."
As liaison, Nueva Esperanza collaborates with various government and non-governmental interlocutors to promote construction of better, more efficient stoves. She now attends to 35 families in her village of San Jeronimo in the district of Valle, 80 km from the national capital, Tegucigalpa. Ana Mercedes Montoya, one of the group which selected Jesús as a liaison and who was also trained by her, is currently a health-care worker responsible for administering basic medicines on behalf of the Ministry of Health. Obviously the scope of the PREN program has gone beyond food security co a more wholistic view of women's needs.
PREN activities also encourage protection of subsoils and the environment. New trees planted by the women provide fruit, lumber and shade and their roots preserve the soil. The only forms of pest control and fertilization the women can afford are organic, which are thus the most sustainable. Hens and eggs provide food or income for families, while their excrement makes useful fertilizer.
The women are open to innovations and have readily adopted trees such as the neem (Azadirachta indica) from India, whose leaves are used in an "insecticide brew." Local techniques for repelling insects include sowing the onion flor de muerto or hot chilies near the vegetable garden.
The handling of small stock requires systematic and continuous care in the administration of vaccines and disease control - a skill the PRENs continuously use and teach in their communities.
Improved nutrition
The increased yield of family vegetable gardens has led to significant improvement in child nutrition, including the almost complete eradication of malnutrition in village children in the less arid central mountain district of Comayagua. In Valle and Choluteca, scarce water and poor land discourage vegetable gardening. Instead the women cultivate dependable tubers such as taro root, cassava, sweet potato, or traditional vegetables and legumes like the pumpkin ayote (Bryonia variegata) and beans. Where water is available in the dry areas, they grow improved seed vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.
While the solutions are micro, the problems remain macro and may yet overwhelm the Honduran women. For every tree and leguminous crop planted by Nueva Esperanza, Montoya and their neighbors, large-scale destruction of resources continues nearby, particularly in the ravaging of coastal mangrove swamps to make way for a prawn farm - the product of which is for export.
The plundering of the environment and of water supply, the lack of employment, of access to land and to credit all threaten the long-term sustainability of the successful experience of the Food Production Liaisons.
Tiny rotating funds, such as one starred by the FAO/UNDP project which funded each group with US$33, are just enough to get things going, but even those miniscule development funds are endangered. Women's lack of access to land and therefore collateral means they have little access to commercial credit, and their potential for growth is curbed. In fact, none of the families of the trained Food Production Liaisons own the land they cultivate, and legislation does not facilitate the task of apportioning land resources to women. In the last 25 years only 3.8 per cent of the nearly 50 000 families benefiting from agrarian reform were headed by women. This is a disaster, considering today 30 per cent of rural heads of household are women.
In hopes this experience will not be lost after this, the last year of the PREN project, an evaluation of sustainability will be carried out, during which a methodological guide and user's manual will be written. At the same time, the rural women's organizations and various other non-governmental organizations will receive training to carry on with the education of the campesina Food Production Liaisons.
Patricia Baeza-Lopez is a Guatemalan journalist now based in Rome.
