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TOPIC 2: HOW CAN WOMEN CONTRIBUTE TO AGRICULTURE?
Starting an agribusiness, women can create opportunities for themselves as well as provide jobs for other women. The success of the entrepreneurial initiative will depend on a few things – the profitability, interest of the community (or demand for the product, service), location, and perspective to grow.
The jobs women take up in agriculture are full-time or part-time. It depends if it is their main way of earning or an additional activity, like a hobby. Women are also freelancers contracted for a specific service, such as carrying furniture, renovation, or gardening.
Women contribute to agriculture especially in 4 areas:
- Local/Regional product (culinary heritage)
- Handicrafts/traditional crafts/ customs and rituals (cultural heritage)
- Cultivation of indigenous varieties of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs (preservation of traditional natural landscape and biodiversity)
- Socio-cultural and sports-tourism activities
What is also worth mentioning is that handicrafts bring generations together. Embroidery, decoupage, or quilling, for example, are hobbies that can be the subject of workshops in rural areas, the products sold at local bazaars or festivals, and have the potential to transform into a business initiative.
By offering their products or services, women can become agriculture ambassadors. Located in remote places and having an idea for business development, they can act as role models and promote fertile land, good location, or even valuable tradition. To honour the achievements of women, the International Women’s Day is celebrated every year, which shows that women have more to say on the global spectrum.
The contribution of women to agriculture can also be reflected in the way women are promoting agriculture with the use of digital resources. Women are aware of the ways of collaboration and networking to support each other’s entrepreneurial activities. Either attending summits or local events, women agripreneurs can inspire as well as learn from others.
Women can also propose new solutions to modernise their farms, invest in equipment or new technologies to make their farms more competitive or to provide better standards of living. They can also offer therapy resulting from the contact with animals. The increased environmental awareness of the society, as well as the impact the good quality food has on their health, interest in the purpose of organic food, selection of food products from local producers, proves the need for agribusiness related to crop production, picking, and selling. With the from farm to fork principle, consumers have become more conscious of what they eat – but also more sensitive from who they buy, to support the local economy. Farm to Fork is also the name of a strategy of the European Commission (20.05.2020) supporting a Fair, Healthy and Environmentally Friendly Food System, aimed to change the approach to food production and set a global standard in this regard. The Strategy maintains the mandatory marking of the product’s origin.
Go to topic 6 of Module 1 to find out how the EU supports women agri-and entrepreneurs.
Speaking about technology, agriculture start-ups are such businesses that provide added value solutions or automatization to traditional agriculture.
What are some agribusiness start-ups by European women?
An example of a European start-up that has introduced technology in farming in the Spanish VisualNAcert. They have developed a platform for farmers to monitor their agribusiness [URL https://visualnacert.com/].
Another start-up from the sector using technology is Ignitia from Sweden. Its business activity is based on digital information system for providing precise weather forecasting to farms in the form of SMSs [URL https://www.ignitia.se/].
Agroptima from Spain is an agri-start-up that has developed an app to manage farms from the screen of smartphones [URL https://www.agroptima.com/].
Some other interesting examples of start-ups in agriculture:
Dahlia Robotics, based in Germany, offers weed removal by a robot [URL https://dahliarobotics.com/]
INFARM, based in Germany, offers “farming in a cloud” – in other words vertical farming [URL https://www.infarm.com/]
IRRIOT, based in Sweden, offers a smart farming solution, namely wireless irrigation [URL https://www.irriot.com/]
The previously mentioned solutions prove that traditional farming is no longer the MAIN source of income in rural areas.
Traditional farming will also remain an important source of living, resulting in the production of food, guaranteeing less dependence on food supply, but also generating new business ideas based on increased product demand, good quality of the product and a good business plan. An example of a large-scale farm from France is ‘Marguerice’, a dairy production business. From the sales of milk, through growing corn and grass for cattle, to the launch of a dairy ice-cream brand, Nienke has become a successful agripreneur [URL https://www.glaces-marguerice.com/].
Traditional farming also contributes to the protection of natural resources, maintenance of biodiversity and is a way of preserving culture.
