Silent governors of Food Sovereignty
Her name is Pan Amma. Pan ( Rush and Reed ) is a wetland plant that is utilized by rural women for hand woven designed products such as bags and mats. I met Pan Amma at a small lake call Gallichchai in Welikanda which is situated in Polonnaruwa district, North Central Province, Sri Lanka.
It was the end of 2018, I and my colleagues at the Centre for Environmental Justice held some village level conversations and site observations with communities to get to know about the level of impacts of the proposed sugar cane plantation project which was planned to acquire thousands of hectares of lands including natural forest areas.
Once we walked on the bank of Gallichchai lake expecting villagers to talk, saw two old women fishing wearing sarees and covering their heads despite the sunshine. The lake was slightly filled, therefore women could easily walk to the shallows of the lake. I went to them and asked, “ Amma, How are you, and were you fishing well?” She came to me with a smiling face and showed me her harvest in her lap. She is Pan Amma, the woman who had the most generous smile I have ever seen though she is struggling with a lot of difficulties in her life.
The story of Pan amma reminded me that women are the conversant guardians of nature who conserve the environment while feeding their families. Pan Ammas’ village is five or six kilometers away from Gallichchai lake and she walked fishing with her daughter-in-law who looks older than Pan Amma. Pan Amma is a Tamil rural woman who lived in Gallichchai village 30 years ago. As she described in broken Sinhala language, her village was attacked and captured by L.T.T.E. and she had to move to another village with what she could collect. But her memories and livelihood had bound with the Gallichchai lake, village, paddy fields where she used to walk for collecting food for her children.
After the civil war, she started to return to the lake at least three days per week for fishing and collect non cultivated food. She uses the small fishing net and spends around two hours to catch fishes for her family consumption and part of the harvest is sold to villages on her way back home. After the fishing, she walks around and collects non cultivated food like mushrooms, herbs, and green leaves for her meal.
According to FAO estimates women produce more than 50% of the food worldwide though her contribution to food security is not well concerned because of insufficient gender-disaggregated data. The multiple roles of women in asserting household-level food security are emphatic since she contributes to planting, weeding, application of pesticides and fertilizers, harvesting, livestock raising, fishing, cooking and food processing, foresting, and marketing. Though rural women representing agricultural workers, peasants, indigenous women, migrants, and laborers silently contribute to all these works struggling with all the issues behind as landlessness, gender discrimination in wages, access to resources and social services, and poverty.
Pan Amma used to spend a collaborative lifestyle with nature because she only collected food for her family needs and daily income even though she could catch more fishes. She concerned about saving food for other villagers, birds, and animals.
The most beautiful thing that I saw on her face is her pure smile which comes from her heart. It s about a feeling of satisfaction with what she collected for the day. In reality, she copes with thousand of struggles in life, but she can smile heartily putting all those issues aside for a moment. So she is called “ Woman”.
Chathu Hathurusinghe