Harvesting a Field of Their Own –Woman’s Right to Food in the Global Food Crisis

Lys Anzia – WNN Features

World Food Programme delivers food to Haitian women – Image: Peter Casier /UNWFP

The fight for women against hunger and malnutrition isn’t getting any easier.

Rising food prices and lower food assistance programs worldwide are causing the ability to help women and their families reach the lowest levels of output since 1961.

As food prices increase, the biggest losers are the ones who “have not.”

Global women suffering under severe poverty are often cut short in receiving food allotments worldwide as they try to feed their children and themselves.

The women of Haiti’s Port-Au-Prince are in their own battle against hunger. With 80% of the Haitian population below the poverty line, women are the section of the population that have been hit the hardest. Recent riots in Haiti, protesting the shortage of food, prove crisis levels of desperation and hunger has begun to seep deep into the community at Port-Au-Prince.

To help the situation, the women of Haiti have tried to come up with a solution to the, as yet, unsolved problems of food shortage. Mud cakes or cookies, made from the yellow clay of Haiti’s central plateau region are the recent answer for many of Port-Au-Prince’s poverty stricken women. Providing the cheapest food available, the cakes are made palatable by adding salt, flavoring and shortening.

These cookies are made by women in an attempt to replace the dwindling and often expensive supply of rice in Haiti. They have now become a common staple for many Haitian families caught in the cycle of poverty and malnutrition.

But the cookies come with a hidden price. Eating the cookies up to three times a day may eventually harm the health of both women and their families, as bellies are filled and bodies go unnourished. While the cookies are filling, this dirt is not what it seems. Some of the clay that is trucked in from the outer regions of Hinche may in fact be hazardous. Not to mention, the soil itself has little food value.

While the cookies are consumed regularly to stave off daily hunger, a woman and her children may be exposed to dangerous heavy metals or parasites from the soil used to make the cookies.

Studies of the sites where the clay is harvested to make the cookies does need more assessment. On soil safety Dr. Gerald N. Callahan, with the Department of Microbiology, Pathology and Immunology at Colorado State University states in the report, “Eating Dirt,” that, “Dirt can pose a health threat, especially near sites of industrial contamination.”

“Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it,” said Executive Director of Health Ministry in Haiti, Gabriel Thimothee.

The mud cookies of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

Today, worldwide food shortage is at an all time high in many countries. As food production goes down, crisis proportions of hunger related disease and death is rising at an alarming rate. Since 1996, international food production and distribution has lessened steadily. As a result, hunger among women and their families has risen proportionately and steadily each year for the last 12 yrs.

Humanitarian Air Service flights for the UN World Food Programme to Darfur, Sudan in June 2008 have, also, just been cut as the fees for flying delivery helicopters increase. Nearly two-thirds of the 77 million dollar budget for food assistance programs in crisis locations worldwide has been unfunded to date. This leaves many women at the very bottom of a sinking program, with a diminishing chance to receive any aid for food.

Women suffering in the wake of this global disaster are specific victims of an ever increasing danger. The danger of long-term excruciating, unsolved one-way starvation.

While hunger itself is not gender specific, many victims of hunger are caught in the denial of food based on their gender. Out of 854 million people who do not get enough food to eat, 70% are women. This means that close to 598 million global women live today with daily lives of hunger.

Shortages of water or contamination of water, along with lowered crop production, also contributes greatly to food production decreases. Natural disasters, too, are destroying crops as hurricanes increase in one area and droughts affect another region. The effects of carbon based fuels on climate change, too, are altering the ability for food production to maintain previous levels.

As the availability of imported foods from global markets declines, food sources that are more scarce are being made available only to the most prosperous industrialized nations. The production of non-petroleum, ethanol based, fuels has also begun to divert the current world stash of corn and other grains – all staples in diets across the world.

In Mexico, corn tortillas are a standard staple of the diet. Up to ten tortillas are eaten each day by many in Mexico. As the food crisis reaches all corners of the world, women of Mexico, who once paid 30 US cents per corn tortilla, are now paying close to double that figure to supply themselves and family with food. This places women suffering at the lowest level of poverty in Mexico to go completely without one of the most important food sources in their diet.

To see more of this story with video and special reports link to page two below > > >

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