Posted 30 June 1999
Prepared by Tina Huvio, Associate Professional Officer, Gender and Biodiversity, FAO Women in Development Service (SDWW)
The local knowledge of both men and women is essential for rural development and food security. However, women's contribution to local knowledge is often ignored, overlooked and undermined by development planners. If the goal of the World Food Summit - to halve the number of hungry people in the world by 2015 - is to be achieved, women's key role as custodians and users of local knowledge must be realized and supported.
Local knowledge - also known as traditional or indigenous knowledge - refers to the knowledge that rural women and men have accumulated knowledge about their surroundings and how it affects their everyday lives. This local knowledge, whether in the form of crop varieties, rotation methods, practices or technologies - is based on experience and often inherited from past generations. Local knowledge is in general dynamic and changing: it has been tested over centuries of use and is still being tested and adapted to suit local conditions, needs and requirements.
The success of rural development efforts depends largely on acknowledging local knowledge. Approaches based on local knowledge usually draw on local resources and are often cheaper than other alternatives. Practices and technologies based on local knowledge are generally better understood and managed by local populations than those that are imported without due consideration of the local environment. An understanding of local knowledge, therefore, allows developers and planners to design projects which not only fit the local framework but also give local people the opportunity to take responsibility for modifying and improving imported practices and technologies to suit their own particular needs.
The holders of local knowledge can include various different types of communities and people who may or may not be farmers. FAO's target group is rural people including both farmers and non-farmers in settled and nomadic communities. The dynamics between different groups and their respective knowledge depend greatly on the location and the existing conditions.
Women and men have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in agricultural production and so their local knowledge is equally distinct. Often they have specialized knowledge of different things; they also might have different knowledge of similar things, and they may have distinctive ways of organizing and transmitting their knowledge. In areas related to the development and conservation of plant genetic resources, for example, they may develop, generate and transmit different - and often specialized - knowledge on diverse species, different varieties and different ecosystems.
Over generations women have been collecting and developing seeds for different properties such as the plant's resistance to disease and pest attacks; storage properties; and dietary preferences - taste, colour texture, palatability and cooking properties.
In many households, women often manage those components of the farming system that contain high levels of diversity such as home gardens, which have been termed "informal experimental stations". Women's gardens are models of sustainable land use: they are typically dominated by perennial rather than annual vegetation and fertilized with mulch, manure and crop residues. Home gardens provide sustained yields, yet cause minimal environmental degradation under continuous use. A study in Nigeria found that women who cultivate intensive home gardens may grow 18 to 57 plant species, including tubers, legumes, grains and fruit-trees, in addition to raising dwarf goats and poultry. As one expert stated: "Women may practise more multiple cropping, plant more carefully and have more knowledge of varieties than their husbands."
Women may also make extensive use of wild patches and marginal areas of community lands where they collect wild plants for food and medicine and seed generation. In fact, women are often the main users of common property resources to satisfy their household requirements. Through their production of staple food crops, they provide a significant share of the yearly food supply for their family as well as for festive and religious occasions. In these activities, women are responsible for numerous innovations.
Despite this wealth of local knowledge, however, women are often overlooked as recipients of technology transfer (Box). Both women and men should be given the opportunity to contribute to studies of local knowledge so that this information can be considered in the planning, implementation, evaluation and monitoring of development projects. In many cases, the different observations and reasons for using types of local knowledge can clarify the relationships and the dynamics behind the received pieces of information.
Transfer of rice technology to men: a case study in MaliIn the Bafoulabe Cercle in Mali, new rice technology is transferred mostly to men. This is despite the fact that it is the women who have a profound knowledge of local rice varieties - knowledge that has been held and passed down from generation to generation. Rice was traditionally grown by women, and only women could identify and describe the local varieties in detail: their growth cycle, plant growth habit, height, number of stems, grain yield, grain size, form and colour, preparation quality, utilization and the taste of the end product. While women cultivated 30 local varieties, men cultivated none. However, in terms of the four introduced improved varieties, men cultivated three and women only one. Synnevag , G. 1997. Gender differentiated management of local crop genetic resources in Bafoulabe Cercle, Kayes Region of Mali - a case study. In Actes du Colloque, 'Gestion des Ressources Génétiques de Plantes en Afrique des Savanes'. pp85-92. Institut d'Economie Rurale, Montpellier, France |
Soil conservation planners have begun to recognize the value of local knowledge - particularly that of women- and projects are incorporating low-cost techniques adapted to local conditions. For example, an agro-forestry project in Yatenga, Burkina Faso, relies on the harvesting of scant rainfall to keep fields and crops moist throughout the growing season. It has successfully combined a traditional technique of collecting water in small pits spaced across fields with the construction of rock banks following the shallow-sloping field contours - and much of the bank building is done by women. Crops in these fields can now survive up to two weeks of drought, producing larger and more reliable yields.
For many years, FAO has recognized the value of local knowledge: the Women in Development Service (SDWW), in particular, is involved in the collection and documention of information carried by women. SDWW has also initiated a project in the Southern African Region to raise awareness about the value of rural men and women's distinct knowledge related to the sustainable use and management of agricultural biodiversity for food security. The project, 'Gender, Biodiversity and Local Knowledge Systems (LinKS) to Strengthen Agricultural and Rural Development' aims to strengthen the capacity of key partner organizations participating in the project to use gender analysis, participatory research and communication for development methods to work with rural communities in order to document and share information about local knowledge systems with communities, NGOs, research institutes and policy makers.
Throughout the life of the project, contracts will be made with local and regional institutions and experts to stimulate, encourage or promote activities in the following areas: the gathering and documentation of useful unpublished material; the production and/or repackaging of information materials in formats that make them appropriate for sharing with a range of audiences; the stimulation of further activities through documentation and sharing of existing good examples, careful targeting of small grants and research, and specific support to institutional structures (e.g. training in communication approaches, gender sensitization); and advocacy work at all levels in order to improve people's own abilities to maintain their diverse environments and practise sustainable agriculture, and to create an enabling policy environment.
One of the first activities in every country has been to identify who is doing what and who has expertise on gender, agro-biodiversity and local knowledge systems within each country. This inventory seeks to document previously unrecorded examples of good practice, and inventory 'grey' literature as well as published material. Out of this inventory, it is possible to identify gaps in information relevant to the aims of the project. A major focus of the project is to build up research activities that promote learning from experience and processes and identify limiting factors in production systems, in order to guide strategic interventions and improve the capacities of smallholder farmers to manage agro-biodiversity for food security.
FAO is also working to promote women, and smallholder farmers in general, in the field of conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources. In 1996, a publication "Farmers' rights in the conservation and use of plant genetic resources: a gender perspective" was prepared for the meeting of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (April, 1996). In the same year, staff from FAO, the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGR), and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and experts joined together to develop a strategy for implementing the gender aspects of the Global Plan of Action (GPA) for the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources. The strategy aims to provide a framework for more effective support to international and national agricultural research and development systems, so that they can increase the attention paid to women as developers, managers and users of genetic resources. It also concurs with FAO's Plan of Action for Women in Development (1996-2001), in ensuring that gender concerns and women participants are integrated in all relevant FAO projects and activities.
The local knowledge of both women and men is integral to rural development and food security. A long-term strategy for improving the recognition and the use of local knowledge of women and men requires:
For further information on women and local knowledge and related issues, please visit our Resources section.