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When you picture a farmer, who do you see?

In Madagascar, that farmer is almost always a woman.

On this island nation in the Indian Ocean, the climate is changing.

Droughts get longer and cyclones more common.

And still, women farm.

They plant crops, they save seeds, they feed families.

Survival here depends on them.

And yet despite the extreme weather, they're not only enduring.

They are experimenting, restoring and reinventing, transforming Madagascar's farming landscape.

I'm Georgie Stiles, a food anthropologist,

and I'm travelling across Madagascar to meet these women and understand how food systems can adapt

as the climate becomes ever more extreme.

From the BBC World Service, this is the documentary, from famine to hope.

I've just driven along dusty red roads for about two hours and have arrived at a farm

outside of Madagascar's sprawling capital city and

Tannenorivo. The hills around me are green with trees and crops. Rice paddies sit in the valleys

with people wading through the fields harvesting their rice and others are taking the produce

back into the village using Zibu, a humpbacked cow and an old wooden cart.

Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world, situated off the south-eastern coast of Africa.

Once known as the Green Island, it's one of the most uniquely biodiverse places outside of the Amazon rainforest.

But climate change has been particularly devastating here.

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