Right policies will aid relationships
That’s what EU Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel told a conference organised by the Women’s Food and Farming Union in Wales.
She said this means having policies in place that create opportunities and give the right kind of support — to women and men, in agriculture and outside it.
“This is what I am trying to do,” she said, noting that in 2005, in the European Union of 27 member states, 26% of farms were managed by women.
Mrs Fischer Boel said that below the level of management women’s contribution to agriculture is stronger still. In 2005 they made up 43% of the regular agricultural workforce. Then there’s the work that women do in other sectors of the rural economy — such as tourism.
Mrs Fischer Boel said in many rural areas the women are leaving — especially the younger women. “This has created such serious problems in some communities that foreign women are being brought in by bus from distant countries to become farmers’ wives.
“This is an inventive solution, but a solution born of desperation,” she said.
