A great deal of the World Congress on Agroforestry, held last week in New Delhi, focused on business: How to link smallholders to markets? How to make agroforestry profitable? How to engage major corporations? How to guarantee social and environmental sustainability while making money?

“We are two Swedish networks… the research network Focali, focusing on Forest, Climate and Livelihood issues and SIANI, the Swedish International Agricultural Network Initiative…”

Why do Thai farmers work hard and are yet still poor? Why depression and helplessness are usually in the thoughts of Thai farmers? Is there a way to make any change? These are questions that I kept asking to myself since to be a rice farmer would be my dream job!

A gender lens was applied to a wide range of agricultural research topics in one of the parallel sessions on Thursday morning (Sep 26th). As is often the case at the gender related discussions, a female dominated audience filled the room and speakers and facilitator were all women. However, as the session commenced about a quarter of seats were occupied by men.