Agricultural planning and development are crucial to human survival, but they usually proceed without any consideration of the importance of gender issues at the production level. Although women have long been prime movers in agriculture, their contribution to the world's food supply has been largely ignored, and consequently their stake in development has been undermined.

This book is both a resource guide and a review of major issues in gender and agriculture which demonstrates that recognizing the contribution of women to agricultural production is a necessary step in development planning. It presents relevant information and research literature regarding women's roles in agriculture in a consolidated and accessible format, offering insights into how the inclusion or exclusion of appropriate information at the planning stage can have an impact during implementation. It also provides guidelines for locating information on gender-related agricultural issues and incorporating it into development planning, research, and training. The literature reviewed not only calls attention to the work women do in order to improve their access to technology and training but also challenges existing development paradigms. The issues discussed present women's experiences and local knowledge and allude to gender and class inequities that farming women face. Each chapter is intended to help the reader address major gender issues in a specific subject in order to access relevant information and thereby better design and implement appropriate agricultural planning and policies.

By synthesizing twenty years of international research, Gender and Agricultural Development provides an effective tool for development practitioners to use in training programs or surveys in order to ensure the appropriate collection of gender disaggregated data and for educators to integrate gender issues into courses dealing with social aspects of agricultural systems. Its findings are presented in such a way as to allow them to be easily incorporated into innovative planning for more sustainable and equitable agricultural policies.

Farm women have often been seen by their city sisters as victims of patriarchy, overwork, and poverty, aptly depicted by the “Migrant Mother” image from the Great Depression. Amy Mattson Lauters now goes directly to the women themselves to get the other side of the story of American farm life: that many women survived and even thrived on farms through the adversity of the Great Depression and beyond.

Though she had only a fifth-grade education, Mary Knackstedt Dyck faithfully kept a diary. Written with pencil on lined notebook paper, her daily notations tell the story of farm life on the far western border of Kansas during the grim Dust Bowl years. Manuscript diaries from this era and region are extremely rare, and those written by farm women are even more so. From the point of view of a wife, mother, and partner in the farming enterprise, Dyck recorded the everyday events as well as the frustrations of living with drought and dust storms and the sadness of watching one's children leave the farm.

A remarkable historical document, the diary describes a period in this century before the telephone and indoor plumbing were commonplace in rural homes—a time when farm families in the Plains states were isolated from world events, and radio provided an enormously important link between farmsteads and the world at large. Waiting on the Bounty brings us unusual insights into the agricultural and rural history of the United States, detailing the tremendous changes affecting farming families and small towns during the Great Depression.

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg has provided an edited version of the diary entries from 1936 to 1941. Her informative introduction tells the story of the Dycks' settlement in western Kansas and places the diary in its historical context.