Where Farming and Nourishment Meet Across food systems globally, women have often been the keepers of more than just crops. This work is rarely counted, yet it shapes health outcomes as surely as what is grown in the field. On a small farm, the boundary between farming and cooking doesn’t really exist. Women grow a significant share of the world’s food and make up a large portion of the agricultural workforce, especially in small-scale and family farming systems.
A place where farming, cooking, preservation, and care meet. It is how to grow well, without exhausting the land or the people tending it. Recipes like this are rarely celebrated, yet they are part of how households stay well, how harvests are used fully, and how care is woven into daily life. That recognition felt aligned with what the Year of the Woman Farmer is meant to point toward.
Not in the field or the fermenting room, but where food is prepared, shared, and eaten.
Source: FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture: Women in Agriculture.² FAO & UN Women.
Small farms survive by paying attention and working within limits. What was planted with care becomes nourishment. It has long been considered a survival food because it is dependable. Like much of the work women have done around food for generations, the recipe is simple and practical. It reflects how I cook at home, using what grows around us and what the land offers freely when you know how to look.
Research consistently shows that if women farmers had the same access to productive resources as men, farm yields could increase by 20–30 percent, improving food security and nutrition outcomes at household and community levels. They carry knowledge of how food moves from harvest to table, how it is preserved, cooked, and shared.
Source: FAO, Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development.
The post The Year of the Woman Farmer, From a Small Farm in Panama appeared first on Newsroom Panama.
From where I work, on a small certified organic farm in Panama, these ideas are not abstract. Each day brings practical decisions about what to plant, what to wait on, and what not to push. Here, the question is rarely how to grow more. Practical, embodied, and often invisible, this is the kind of work that keeps households fed and landscapes cared for.
A Recipe Rooted in Place In 2022, one of my recipes was selected for inclusion in The Cookbook in Support of the United Nations: For People and Planet, a collection of dishes contributed by cooks and food producers around the world. The recipe I shared is called Stinging Nettle Tart with Breadnut Olive Oil Crust. It is designed to nourish.
What mattered most to me was not seeing my name in print, but seeing this kind of everyday food knowledge acknowledged as valuable. What is planted is chosen with preparation in mind. Fruit is gathered with an eye toward what can be preserved when abundance arrives all at once. Cacao is harvested with fermentation and drying already in view. The stinging nettles are wild foraged on the farm. Breadnut (Brosimum alicastrum) is a tropical tree seed used as a staple food in parts of Central America. Often described as a tropical chestnut, it is valued for its nutritional density and reliability. Turmeric and ginger become easy-to-use paste or wellness tinctures.
It is not designed to impress. Where food is valued for how it supports bodies and relationships over time. If you would like to step a little closer, I’ve shared the recipe Stinging Nettle Tart with Breadnut Olive Oil Crust from The Cookbook in Support of the United Nations: For People and Planet. You can find the recipe here: lynbishop.com/nettletart/
It’s offered as a way to cook along, to taste what grows here, and to begin the year grounded in nourishment rather than noise. Some things don’t need to be rushed.
Farming at this scale is shaped by soil, weather, labor, and time. It asks how food will support bodies over time, not just how it will move through a market. Women make up approximately 43 percent of the global agricultural labor force, with significantly higher participation in small-scale and family farming systems in many regions. Yet they still face unequal access to land, training, credit, and decision-making power, despite clear evidence that supporting women farmers improves food security and long-term land health.¹ ²
Between global declarations and daily realities, there is often a gap that is harder to name than to feel. Not recognition for its own sake, but attention to the systems and practices that have long carried people and land forward, often without being named. What was preserved becomes sustenance. What was gathered becomes part of daily life.
Returning to the Hearth On a small farm, all of this work eventually comes together in one place. This is what I think of as the hearth. Not a concept or a metaphor, but a practical center. Where care and restraint are not values layered onto the work. Where limits are respected. Where food is valued for how it supports bodies and relationships over time.
¹ FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).
