Giving Compass' Take:

• UN Women reports on the growth of women's agricultural cooperatives in rural Ethiopia, which help boost both sustainable farming practices and the country's economy.

• How can international development organizations support coops like these? Doing so can help promote gender equity around the globe and help fight climate change.

• Here's how empowering women leads to innovative agriculture practices.

In most parts of the Dodola district, 300 km south of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, slow-moving oxen plowing opens stretches of farmland. But in one field, a red tractor is speedily tilling women’s cooperative owned farmland ahead of the rainy season.

For Kamso Bame, a widowed mother of 12 and owner of 2.5 acres of land, the tractor has shaved off days of grueling labour.

Bame is among more than 2,000 smallholder women farmers involved in a joint UN program to boost sustainable agricultural production and rural women’s economic empowerment, through training and cooperatives.

After Bame joined the women’s cooperative in her village of Wabi Burkitu, she received a 7,000 Birr ($259 USD) loan, which she used to start a cart-transport service. Bame uses her daily average income of 400 Birr ($15 USD) to support her children, four of whom live independently. Her membership also enables her to cultivate the land using a tractor owned by the cooperative.

"Before the death of my husband, whenever the rainy season came, I remember him spending three to four days ploughing the family’s land with the pair of oxen we owned. Each day, he and the oxen used to come back home exhausted," she recalls. "Today, it is different, as I am privileged to farm the same land with a tractor and it takes a maximum of three hours."

According to Letty Chiwara, UN Women Representative for Ethiopia, agricultural cooperatives — especially those established by women in rural areas — play a key role in enhancing productivity through sustainable farming practices.

Read the full article about how women's cooperatives are boosting agriculture in Ethiopia at UN Women.