University of Canberra researchers helping women farmers and their families in Papua New Guinea to improve their business and agricultural management skills have received a $3 million funding boost.
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Professor of community learning and development Barbara Pamphilon and her colleagues have been working with communities discovering what women need to run their farms as small home businesses.
"We know that when women are in control of the finances from their smallholder farms, then about three quarters of the money earned stays within the family," Professor Pamphilon said.
"The figures are vastly different when men are in charge of the purse-strings, with just 25 per cent of earnings typically going to support the family," she said.
In dangerous, remote areas of the highlands and Bougainville, the university educators work closely with local partners, Baptist Union and National Agricultural Research Institute, who help interpret research findings, identify the right people to approach and know when things become unsafe.
The idea began about 2000, when a University of Canberra community development team member, Barbara Chambers, looked into technical and social aspects of food crop production. This led to a pilot study on whether women were left out of training.
The grant from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research will see teams of village community educators enlisted and trained to help local families in more regions over the next three years.
Overcoming language barriers will be another challenge in a country with 800 different languages. The village educators who listen in English, speak to their people in Tok Ples or Tok Pisin, which Professor Pamphilon has a good understanding of, and can get the gist of where they are heading. Nevertheless, two people in Canberra and in PNG will be employed to help iron out language hurdles.
The team is careful not to be seen as experts coming in with valuable information or as white people bringing the best information. They don't pull women out of the family and build them up individually but invite families to send two heads of their family, a male and female.
"It means women are at the table in the family, discussing their role, putting in their contribution, how things could be better, more effective, more efficient," professor Pamphilon said.
The program encourages men and women to see themselves as a family team and to work together to plan the growing and selling of their produce, from fruit and vegetables to home crafts.
Some of the practices include understanding pricing, marketing, reinvesting in materials needed for their farming plots and saving money for larger purchases.
"Something as simple as encouraging the farmer to wash produce, to be well presented at their market stall and to know their competitors' prices can get a better return for their hard work," Professor Pamphilon said.
