Small farmers in Mozambique
Country: Mozambique |Â Partner: UNAC
Aims
- To build the capacity of local peasants’ organisations to enable them to demand their rights and participate in policy making
- To increase the participation of women in leadership positions to reduce gender inequality
- To utilize traditional peasant knowledge to improve production systems
- To build alliances throughout Mozambique and strengthen ties with international networks
Successes
- Peasants have been trained in social and economic rights, disaster prevention, commercialisation, the nature and possibilities of credit, literacy and leadership for women peasants and participatory rural development
- A big campaign against the forced acceptance of GM foods was launched and successfully prevented raw GM seeds from entering the country
- National seminars were organised with government representatives to discuss research findings and influence governmental rural policies
- Local, provincial and national events, including marches, were organised to draw attention to rural inequalities
The facts
- Of Mozambique's labour force, 63% of men and 92% of women work in agriculture
- There is evidence in Manica, a province in Mozambique, that the best land is being taken over by investor groups and commercial farms, evicting small farming families from their land in the process
- Women are especially disadvantaged, as they are uneducated, have very restricted social contacts, and have no influence in decision making because of male dominated rural systems
In Mozambique 80% of the poor live in rural areas and land rights are hugely important, both for people's livelihoods and cultural identity. However, rural people face major difficulties, in terms of awareness and organisation, to effectively claim and enforce these rights. UNAC (União Nacional de Camponeses) is the national farmers' movement founded in 1987 by the farmers themselves that now comprises 32,000 members.
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Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, with over 70% of the population living on less that $1 a day and poverty rates as high as 90% in rural areas. The majority of the rural population survives on subsistence farming and land is a crucial asset for people's survival; however, it also has very strong social and cultural connotations around which communities construct their local identity and social structure.
Despite having one of the most pro-poor land laws globally, recent government drives to encourage private investment have resulted in the rights of private investors being elevated above those of rural people. Private investment in rural areas in other countries has not been shown to decrease rural poverty levels, and can actually deteriorate livelihoods as investment activities often infringe on communally-determined rights of small farmers. This factor, coupled with the increasing number of conflicts over land that have spread from the recent troubles in Zimbabwe, has led to increasing pressure on the land.
UNAC was founded to give small farmers a voice in rural and agricultural policy-making because, as in many other countries, rural people lack the means to hold the government and international actors to account. By developing the current capacity building programme to provide people with gender and advocacy training, leadership training for women, and political organisational training, UNAC, in conjunction with War on Want, have worked towards ensuring that the voice of small farmers is included in national and international debates on rural development in Mozambique.
