ICARDA Caravan 6

atma is a strong ally in the fight to make agricultural development sustainable. She is a farmer in the New Lands, reclaimed desert which the Egyptian Government has decided can be productive. Effective natural-resource management work can not ignore the role of women in the farming system. They are half the farming community.  And Fatma, in any case, does not intend to be ignored. 
        She made her point on a hot day in Al-Amerria in Alexandria, Egypt. A workshop was being held as part of a project to monitor long-term sustainability of New Lands agriculture. The farmers taking part had been chosen with random sampling techniques to ensure that they were representative. Fatma was not one of them; however, when a participant in the workshop was on his way to pray, she stopped him and demanded that she be one of the farmers in her village being interviewed for the project.
         The workshop was part of the long-term resource management monitoring ICARDA and Egyptian institutions are carrying out under the Egyptian component of the Nile Valley and Red Sea Regional Program (NVRSRP). With a population growth rate of around 2.6%, boosting food production (while providing employment and investment opportunities) are major objectives of Egypt's massive land reclamation schemes. Approximately 0.8 million hectares of Egypt's western desert have been turned into verdant gardens since the late 1950s by bulldozing the dunes flat, installing physical and social infrastructure, and bringing water via canals to the new farms. It is an inspiring project. However, the Government is well aware of the need to ensure that it is sustainable.

farmers like Noura and Fatma, is providing employment and increased income to other women too.
        Hallah is another remarkable success story. A graduate with a degree in agriculture, she originally came as a pioneer to El-Bustan with her father (who was not a farmer but a retired employee of the electricity company in Alexandria). She settled on two hectares equipped with drip irrigation facilities and a greenhouse. Hallah's dedication to developing her farm to serve as a model to her neighbors bore fruit in more ways than one. She became a leader in the area and the first point on the itinerary for important guests, and she made a record of each of her farming activities, the time and expenses incurred, and her returns. This so impressed visiting officials that before long she was offered scholarships for additional training and studies in Egypt and abroad. Her father has taken greater management responsibilities on her farm in order to allow her to pursue her professional farming career. This is indeed a reversal of the traditional gender roles in Egyptian agriculture.

        At first glance, Mouna presents a more traditional picture. Her husband, Hassan, a college graduate and part-time mechanic, is out in the field, so she invites the researchers to her house to sit and wait. Amidst the bits of machinery and spare parts, which clutter the compound, her two young children play. But as the researchers start talking with her, they  learn that Mouna is also a graduate with a Diploma in Commerce, who came to El Bustan from Buheira--near El Bustan, but in the West Delta area of the Old Lands--in 1988. She has, on loan from the government, a two-hectare farm--as big as that of her husband (although now they are farming the two pieces of land together).  Moreover, she knows all about the farm management, inputs, decisions, market process
       As well as being active farmers, the researchers have also been struck by the women's very active role in the research process, which has actually forced the researchers at some points to rethink their approach.
        "If you don't give me the information I'm asking for about my land, and if you aren't honest with me, how can you expect me to be honest with you?" Noura, the farmer from Bangar Sukur, asked researchers during her participation in one of the project workshops. The team of social and biophysical scientists had encouraged the participation of farmers such as Noura in the research, but where were the boundaries? It is widely accepted that farmers are in reality researchers themselves, constantly experimenting on their farms for the best results. But what would happen to the scientific aspects and controlled experiment nature of the monitoring exercise if the farmers began to act on the research findings and actually start to experiment with different resource management options, as intelligent and determined people like Noura are bound to do? Clearly, the more that farmers like Noura and Fatma participate in research, the less clear the distinction between farmers and researchers becomes.
        In Fatma's case, the issue was over the necessarily limited number of farmers who could be included as direct participants in research activities. The project had already used random sampling to select participants to answer the carefully prepared questionnaires.
        And yet, in the face of Fatma's fierce argument, they had to concede the point. According to the selection criteria, she was as suitable for inclusion, if not more suitable, than others. After further lengthy discussion, the project team agreed to include Fatma as a participant.  Farmer participation in agricultural research is often a case of farmers selecting themselves as participants, rather than researchers being allowed to select farmer participants on predetermined scientific, objective criteria.
        These are some of the problematic situations that arise when researchers truly encourage farmer (male and female) participation in research. However, the benefits of such an approach are also apparent. Fatma, like other community members, saw the project as important and was motivated to be a part of it. The relationship between the researchers and the farmers is good, and the latter are keen to provide information and to assist in the researchers' work.
        The NVRSRP and the national program's research in Egypt's New Lands is a good example of the need to uncover women's often invisible contribution to agriculture. It also illustrates another factor in natural-resources management: If you encourage people, including women, to participate, they may actually start to define the research process. And that can only make the research more relevant.

Dr Moustafa Bedier is Socioeconomist in the Nile Valley and Red Sea Regional Program of ICARDA, based in Cairo.Dr Richard Tutwiler is Socioeconomist in the Farm Resources Management Program of ICARDA. Ms Christine Kalume is Science Writer/Editor, ICARDA.

         ICARDA has been involved since 1994, but has been doing similar work elsewhere in the region for a long time; the idea was to use this experience in Egypt.
        This long-term monitoring of farmers, their fields and crops is being carried out in parallel with on-station rotation trials. The aim is to come up with effective, practical recommendations for sustainable farming in the three agroecological areas where the project is working: the Old Lands in the Nile Valley and Delta; the rainfed lands along the Mediterranean coast, and the New Lands, recently reclaimed from desert for modern, irrigated agriculture. Fatma's village is in El Bustan (in Arabic, 'the garden'), one of the two project sites in the New Lands. The area covers about 180,000 fedhans (1 fedhan = 1.038 acres or 0.42 hectares) of which 85-89 settlements covering 38,536 fedhans make up the study area.
        The work is still in its early stages, but, in a land where women traditionally participate in farming as unpaid family workers or as daily laborers under the direction of men, what has most struck the researchers has been the success of women owning and operating their own farms in these New Lands--a phenomenon not so readily apparent in either the Old Lands or in the rainfed areas--and the active participation of the women in the project as Fatma's case illustrates.
        The high profile of women in the New Lands is, in part, a result of the Egyptian government's deliberate policy of offering young university and higher education graduates, both men and women, the opportunity to own newly-reclaimed farmland. It is selling the land to the graduates who buy it with a long-term loan (like a mortgage). The goal is that the graduates find jobs (on their farms) and at the same time contribute to increasing national food production. A large number of women graduates took up the Government's offer--12% of land owners in Bangar Sukur and 10% in El-Bustan are women--often leaving their families in big cities like Alexandria or in small villages in the delta and valley for the first time. Yet the majority are still on their farms 10 years later and committed to making a success. And this in itself is newsworthy.
        "I can survive here and I like the work," says Noura, a graduate woman farmer in Bangar Sukur, the second project site. Her sentiments reflect those of many of the women farmers in the New Lands. Now in her mid-thirties, Noura arrived in Bangar Sukur in the 1980s when she bought two hectares, a house and a cow through the government scheme, and she cultivated the land--mostly under barley--to pay back her loan. Bangar Sukur is very close to Alexandria and it is a popular place for city people to rent land for cultivation, but despite the economic incentives Noura has refused to lease her land to others. She proudly states that she has made her commitment and has no intention of backing out now.
        Unmarried, she carries out most of the farm tasks herself, although she, like others, employs young women from the traditional farming areas along the Nile and its Delta region during periods of peak labor demand, particularly at harvest-time. Trucks filled with groups of brightly dressed and chattering girls have become a common sight on the roads in and around the New Lands. The demand for agricultural workers generated by new farmers like Noura not only indicates the success of the pioneering settlers in the New Lands, but also the benefits of land reclamation for the people of the nearby Old Lands. Agricultural development, based on the efforts of dedicated