KABUL - Boosting the position of women as equal partners in the agricultural industry is the aim of a new national strategy that is part of a larger Afghan-UN development project.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations recently launched a National Strategy on Women in Agriculture Development.

The strategy was developed as part of the joint Ministry-FAO project, ‘Strengthening the Role of Women in Agriculture Development’, which places women as central to all of their agricultural interventions.

Women account for 43 per cent of agricultural workers in Afghanistan, with the sector employing around 60 per cent of the Afghan workforce. Agricultural contributes as much as 40 per cent of the country’s GDP.

FAO already supports three women technology transfer centres in Herat, Badakhshan and Kabul provinces. The centres support access to and demonstrations of relevant technologies on kitchen gardening, food processing, drip irrigation, green houses and compost bin micro-gardening.

“These centres are dedicated to enhancing the capacity of women by learning new agriculture techniques within a safe environment which contributes to increased agricultural productivity and income generation,” said Mr. Shichiri.

“By supporting women with skills and knowledge to access resources and markets they will be able to address food insecurity at household level, and therefore help strengthen food security nationwide,” said Mr. Shichiri.

The National Strategy will review the existing situation of women in the agricultural sector while planning to identify the key inequalities and constraints they face in the country’s system of food production. In particular, it will focus on accessing productive resources for increasing women’s productivity and for the achievement of food and nutrition security, both at the household and national levels.

Mr. Shichiri said women make an essential contribution to the agricultural sector in Afghanistan “from production on the family plot to food preparation to distribution within the household and beyond.”

Listen to a UN Radio interview with FAO Representative to Afghanistan, Tomio Shichiri.