How one woman’s aptitude for farming inspired a whole community
“I don’t have to go to the market every day to purchase vegetables. Now I am proud to say that I am growing my own produce and hope to be able to save money,” Gul describes.
FAO’s Farmer Field Schools are helping the community in Tando Allahyar increase their agriculture productivity. ©FAO/A. Noor
Nestled among date trees and endless lush fields in southeastern Pakistan is the district of Tando Allahyar. The main source of income for many villages in the area is farming, as it is in the rest of the province of Sindh. However, despite the vast area of arable land, people struggle to make a living. The villages here have only limited water and electricity and lack functioning schools. In one such village lives Gul Bano, a fifty-one year-old mother of seven who is changing the narrative of the women in Tando Allahyar.
The only educated female in the village, Gul completed her graduate degree in Karachi but moved to Tando Allahyar when she got married. She is one of the few women in the village who owns a small piece of land herself. Because of this, she was always interested in farming, but limited knowledge and means stopped her from pursuing it. After a visit from FAO field facilitators, Gul began attending the local participatory sessions where she first learned about the Improving Land Tenancy in Sindh (ILTS) project.
Supporting the local community
The FAO ILTS project, funded by the European Union and in partnership with the Government of Sindh, aims to improve the food and nutrition security of poor, agriculture-dependent communities in Sindh by improving their land access, security and knowledge of farming. In 2012, it was estimated that 7.74 million people were employed in rural Sindh, the majority of them working as landless sharecroppers (also known as haris, farmers who use land in exchange for giving landlords a share of the crops) and wage workers on farms.