LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - With the worldwide issue of climate change and global warming, the cause of massive food insecurity this year, rural women are extremely vulnerable and overlooked by governments and policy makers who decide have to stave off hunger for their populations.

The United Nations' 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, scheduled to run until March 9 at U.N. headquarters in New York, listed the empowerment of rural women as one of its priority themes for the year.

"If rural women had equal access to productive resources, agricultural yields could reduce the number of chronically hungry people by between 100 and 150 million," a press release from U.N. Women read.

This year's commission promises to examine the "empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, sustainable development and current challenges (and) will agree on urgent actions needed to make a real difference in the lives of millions of rural women."

Women farmers around the world are already deep in a struggle to secure their environment against the destabilizing impacts of climate change. They are combating this problem by using their traditional role as community leaders to sow the seeds of hope for their future.

In one success story, in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, woman farmer Mosammet Rini-Ara Begum shows how she survives and thrives in the arid, Northwestern Barind Tract region. Pointing to a heap of rice stored in a makeshift tin shed in her backyard, the 34-year-old mother of three opens the bamboo fence of her small grain storehouse, saying, "This is the third time I got such a good harvest of rice despite the drought."

Thousands of farmers in the region have abandoned agricultural land and production, especially cash crops like rice and wheat, in the face of unusually hot and arid weather. Advised by agricultural experts on drought-resistant crops, Rini and her husband cultivated a new breed of rice known as BRRI-56, which thrives in extremely hot and dry conditions.

Unlike other local rice varieties, which require rain soon after planting, BRRI-56 grows without water for weeks. It also survives the torrid Barind heat between July and November during the rice maturation period.

Women are already leading the way towards a more organic, just future. The question for the international community - including the U.N.'s CSW - is whether or not the world will follow.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.