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The fourth group discussed action track 4, Advance equitable livelihoods. The key issues discussed in the group in the context of women and the current food systems include: 1) Lack of visibility, identity and recognition of women workers despite them playing significant roles at all stages in the food supply chain 2) Women’s limited access to resources including land, finance, information - leading to a lack of access to government schemes and subsidies as well as financial services. 3) The majority of the women informal workers in the food system are into home based informal enterprises �... Read more� making them invisible in the food systems. The group proposed four game-changing solutions, including a cross-cutting solution. 1. Organizing is the key to empower rural women workers and small holder women farmers and make the food systems equitable and just. 2. Policies that treat the farm as an enterprise, promote women-owned and managed social enterprises and bring in technology and skills to strengthen the decentralized supply chains. 3. Policies that promote asset ownership by women farmers, direct procurement from women farmers - thereby facilitate decent and enhance livelihood opportunity. 4. Improved access to finance and Market access has emerged as a cross-cutting solution across all five ACTION TRACKS. Read less

The third group discussed action track 3, Boost nature-positive production. Farmers from various parts of India shared examples where the development of pasture land, and commons, was taken up focusing on water conservation and plantation and that led to livelihood generation as well as value addition and forward linkages. One of the most discussed solutions was preserving, strengthening and promoting women’s traditional knowledge of the bio resources. Participants in the third group proposed three game changing solutions as below. 1. Preserve and promote eco-regenerative food production met... Read morehods including climate, seeds, traditional methods and knowledge. 2. Policies to encourage and promote management of commons (including but not limited to water, barren and wastelands, grass and forest lands) by local women’s collectives 3. Policies to promote decentralized food production systems, thereby promoting affordable and traditional methods and techniques such as local inputs, local seeds, bio-fertilizers and clean energy solutions Read less

The second group discussed action track 2, Shift to sustainable consumption patterns. Some concerns were raised in this group discussion. The key issue highlighted was “what is being produced is not eaten and instead, is exported. What is being eaten is what has been imported.” Some participants also noted that there is a disconnect between the producers and the consumers due to change in food preferences and consumption patterns. Other issues related to food wastage, hoarding of food grains by traders and middlemen leading to inflation, lack of markets for small surplus produce, governmen... Read moret policies around PDS (the government subsidized Public Distribution System) which allowed distribution of low-quality grains, and distribution of non-local grains like wheat and rice were mentioned. Additionally, participants discussed issues related to policies. Current policies do not ensure ownership of land to women, or disassociate access to resources and land ownership, thus leading to women’s inability to access financial resources, extension services, benefits and entitlements from government as a small farmer. The group proposed three game changing solutions as below. 1. Address the issue of food wastage by training local producers to produce contemporary nutritious food using locally grown traditional food grains and produce. 2. Educate and create awareness about hidden environmental costs of food production to the general consumers. Address the role of media, celebrities and large corporates / brands in promoting harmful dietary habits and junk food. 3. Policies that Promote traditional food through a. Emphasizing on local procurement and distribution through PDS b. Enabling market access and support for small women farmers c. Promoting FPO’s that connect Producers directly to Consumers. Read less

The first group discussed the first action track, Ensure Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for all. Participants discussed how to promote a member-owned food supply chain, member-owned agriculture tool, and equipment library for small holder women. The group proposed three game-changing solutions as below. 1. Organizing poor smallholder farmers and women workers, promoting their own member-owned and managed supply chain and thus building their collective strength, bargaining power and decision-making agencies. 2. Focus on increasing affordability and accessibility to nutritious food for all t... Read morehrough women producer food systems and supply chains. 3. Preserving, promoting and practicing indigenous practices through technological inclusion. Read less

At the end of the discussion, each group came up with 3 game changing solutions. Some of these game-changing solutions are as below. 1. Organizing is the key to empower rural women workers and small holder women farmers and make the food systems equitable and just. Promoting their own member-owned and managed supply chain will help building their collective strength, bargaining power and decision-making agencies. 2. Policies that treat farm as an enterprise, promote women-owned and managed social enterprises and bring in technology and skills to strengthen the decentralized supply chains. 3. P... Read moreolicies that Explicitly recognize and promote the rights of women who are structurally disadvantaged. 4. Focus on Affordability and accessibility to enable increased effective reach of nutritious food for all. 5. Promote traditional food through pro-poor and pro-women farmer policies as well as linking consumer directly to producers through producer-led-value chains. 6. Reviving, promoting and implementing indigenous practices through technological integration. 7. Promote local production and distribution to address the issue of food wastage as well as localization of agricultural value chain to generate better, just and equitable livelihood opportunities. 8. Educate and create awareness about hidden environmental costs of food production to the commons. 9. Promote eco-regenerative solutions, management of resources and commons by rural women workers. Additionally, organizing rural women workers and enabling access to financial services and market linkages came out as a cross-cutting solution across all groups. Read less

Women are the back-bone of an informal worker’s household and most commonly shoulder the responsibility of fulfilling the family’s food and nutritional needs. At the same time, women play a major role in the Food system – in production, processing, trading of food and in making decisions about consumption and purchase of food at household level. Despite their importance in the food system, women are constrained by their lack of land ownership and access to other resources due to patriarchal farming systems and gender discrimination. Additionally, agricultural support systems in India are... Read more mostly composed of men, affecting women’s access to resources to increase their incomes. Therefore, tackling gender injustice and truly empowering women is not only a fundamental prerequisite for food systems transformation but also a goal. Building more inclusive food systems will be key to supporting vulnerable populations affected by the pandemic. Inclusive food systems have the potential for integrating the poor and marginalized into food supply chains, enabling them to escape poverty, improving nutrition, and thereby, reducing national and global inequalities. To discuss and deliberate on these issues and possible game changing solutions to address these issues, IFPRI, SEWA and RECOFT co-hosted a regional dialogue on Women, Work and Food Systems on 4th March. As the dialogue mainly focused on the Action Track 4: Advance Equitable Livelihoods, this dialogue served as one in a series of regional dialogues to discuss how we can achieve the triple goal of gender equality, sustainable and healthy food systems. The dialogue brought together over 100 participants including economists, academicians, scientists, farmers and farmer organizations, policy makers, consumers, private sector and others from over 10 different sectors. In order to engage different stakeholders actively in the dialogue, five breakout groups were created based on the five action tracks. The opening remarks about the dialogue theme, Women, Work, and Food Systems, were delivered before the breakout group discussion to provide the context of women in food systems to participants. Each group was encouraged to come up with three game changing solutions at the end of the discussion. Cross-cutting solutions across all breakout groups were identified. Read less

Only a couple of the small groups identified areas of divergence. Thus, what follows are the only areas of divergence that emerged during our Dialogue. Regarding trade policy around food production in Chile, one part of the small group indicates that, if the export is higher, then the price of food rises in the domestic market due to movements in the trade balance. Therefore, the State must regulate foreign trade to control prices in domestic markets. For their part, other participants in the small group declare that the price of food is not regulated by the international market, because Chile... Read more only exports fruits, practically no vegetables. So, controlling foreign trade and the country's trade balance would not impact the prices of vegetables. In this way, they propose the generation of a public policy focused on the tax burden of food (for example, VAT could be lowered to healthy foods) so that consumers buy healthy products at a lower and better price. Reeducation of the general population, in the sense that it understands that agricultural products are temporary. Disagreement occurs when a person argues that it is possible to find most products in other locations and it is even possible to import them. Lack of political will to re-educate in new systems. People counter-argue that the will has existed for a long time, that the diagnosis is understood by all, but the lack of continuity of governments makes it difficult to maintain public policies. Promotion of differentiation of healthier foods, added value (eg front-of-package labels). Some people argued that there are enough healthy foods and that in general these foods are aimed at upper-middle-income people, but the main nutrition-related health problems as well as problems with healthy food access are in low-income people, who are the ones who most need a dietary change. Solve problems of access to healthy food. Some participants argue that access exists, as there are farmers markets (ferias libres) everywhere. Differences in access throughout Chile was also discussed (eg extreme areas). Read less

Greater territorial planning and modification of the regulatory plan in cities, in order to favor agricultural soils. “Protect the resources that we still have” (example of community gardens that arise due to the need for space in very dense cities).

Organize intersectoral coordination, so that policies are more permanent.

Carry out more participatory instances: dialogues, territorial discussions.

Register and make visible where the alternative short food supply chains are, especially that include smallholder farmers.

Innovation initiatives need to be inclusive of local as well as sustainable agriculture

More educational and marketing campaigns are needed around healthy eating, but such campaigns also needed to be accompanied with support for both greater physical and economic access to such healthy foods