WARM Meeting Minutes

June 17. 2008


Update was given on CSD by Katharine & Cheryl. Network of Women Agricultural Ministers and Leaders was established by WOCAN, with support from IFAD and Heifer.

Cheryl asked that members of the WARM Network recommend women ministers and leaders to be recruited in to this NWAML that they may have professional ties to. Cheryl described meeting Mozambique's Minister of Environment at CSD, whom she had previously known through a project they had been involved in together, whom Cheryl was then able to bring into the NWAML.

Deborah Barry suggested that a Security Council meeting should be dedicated to food security - that as long as food security is the hot topic we should make the most of it.

Dianna Forte reported on the InterAction meeting in May. InterAction has established a working group on agriculture with representation from NGO members - this is the first time InterAction has explicitly addressed agriculture in this way. InterAction is looking to Heifer, WOCAN and members of the WARM network to bring gender into the discussions of the working group. The first meeting is June 25 - the focus will be on gender in agriculture. Winrock is co-chairing the meeting.

Katharine and Debdatta went over a few business items
o The next WARM meeting will be at Chemonics, on July 24 - organized by Sarah Tisch
o Starting in September, WOCAN will organize & sponsor a regular WARM meeting every other month.
o Members are encouraged to organize and schedule additional WARM meetings to take place after events of interest to the network.
o Suggestion was made to try to link WARM members into the meetings via speaker phones or skype.
o WOCAN is making space available through its website to host a WARM space. We could actually call it the WARM Space. We are hoping to have the basics set up by the July meeting. The WARM Space could include an ongoing discussion board and blog.

Catherine Ragasa - the PDF version of World Bank's Gender and Agriculture Source Book will be available to WARM members on the WARM Space before it's out in print version - It will be ready by July. Catherine was interested in the potential for reaching all of WOCAN's members around the world with the G&A Source Book through the link to WOCAN website.

Catherine Ragasa mentioned the Rural Event in Development Marketplace, to take place at the World Bank in September / October. Catherine asked the network to recommend women invitees to speak at the event.

Ruth and Carol asked if there are gender criteria judging the projects. Answer is yes, there are two gender criteria and Eija Pehu is one of the judges.
World Bank ins also launching the Smart Economics program, - a 500 million, 5 year program to integrate gender into projects ...

Several people discussed that the WARM Space website could be used to develop and post position papers & op-ed pieces related to gender and agriculture and NRM

Nata mentioned several points about an advocacy agenda that the WARM Network could develop as a set of consistent, core messages - on women's property rights and rights to water.

Deborah Rubin mentioned that there was an increasing emphasis on free market on the assumption that it will solve the issues of inequalities among genders.
BIFAD- the board advising USAID on its agriculture programs. The meetings are held every four months. It is an open meeting and the WARM network members could take this opportunity to attend to push the WARM agenda.

Ruth informed members about the next CG meeting which will be held in mozambique. She also mentioned the Crawford Lecture.

Ruth also informed members that the CG Gender Diversity Program has been launched. Applicants are welcome. IFPRI has also launched a baseline assessment of women in African Agricultural Research dataset.

Carol mentioned that this baseline dataset could refer to the survey of AWLA. This survey had covered 200-300 women.

Debora Rubin: mentioned that it will be interesting to compare with other program.

Cheryl mentioned that it might be good to invite Women who work on teh Hill to WARM meetings in order to educate them and build our connections and capacity for advocacy on the Hill.

Cheryl suggested WARM should invite Eva Clayton, a former congress woman and deputy director general of FAO. She has already written to Obama on food prices. We could invite her to write an Op-Ed piece on gender, agriculture and responses to the food crisis. Deborah Rubin also suggested that we develop a gender and agriculture notebook for the incoming president.

Cheryl also pointed out how the high level meeting of UN agencies on food crisis held at the FAO in Rome failed to mention women farmers.

Katherine mentioned an article in the New York times about private hedge funds investing in agriculture infrastructure including buying land agricultural potential in Sub-Saharn Africa to consolidate for large scale production. This could have negative consequences for small-holder farmers, especially women.

Cheryl mentioned IFAD tracking N indicators for land related issues.