The importance of women farmers

Concern Worldwide knows that women who farm play a vital role in their communities.

Jillo, Lubaba, Albertina and Namia tell us their stories.

Jillo lost her livestock to drought.

"I was divorced and left with five children and I had to find a way of making a living. I burned charcoal and borrowed money," she reveals.

Concern’s farming programme in Kenya enabled Jillo to grow an abundance of crops.

"I have really benefited from the programme… Now I have vegetables to add to my family’s meals. I never get tired of working on my plot and I have a lot of food."

Repeated flooding damaged Lubaba’s land and her harvest in Ethiopia.

With our help, her community planted trees, grass and built stone terraces to prevent the rains from washing away the nutrient-rich top soil vital for growing crops.

"It made a huge difference in the production of my farmland," Lubaba says. 

"I used to just harvest five quintals and now the minimum is 10. We now eat three meals a day and I am in a better situation."

"I grow food here on our land but we have always struggled to make any money," she says.

"I have had to work on other people’s land to make any income."

She is now participating in a farmer field school run by Concern in Mozambique.

"My life was not good before, but now I am much more independent. In the past we didn’t even have enough to buy clothes - now things are a lot better."

"There was a time when life was not like this [in South Sudan]," she tells us. 

"I used to just gather wild fruits or fire wood but now we have all these vegetables.

"We have food to eat and a small amount to sell.

"I am now able to make nursery beds and I am familiar with different crops that I didn’t know about before. We didn’t have them before and now we can grow them ourselves."

These women are the key to providing food for their families; building livelihoods and enriching their communities.

With your support, we can make sure that more female farmers have the tools, training and supplies needed for agricultural success.