Women, food security and agriculture in a global market place

This paper reviews current thinking and practice on increasing agricultural productivity for women farmers within commercial agriculture. It maps out opportunities and barriers for women and concludes by providing recommendations for the international development community.

Various barriers exist for women farmers attempting to establish themselves within commercial agriculture these include:

• Asset-poor small-scale farmers, including many women farmers are often excluded from high-value sourcing chains and thus excluded from gaining significant profits. For example, supermarkets often prefer to obtain produce from large and medium sized farms.
• Food production and supply companies typically set up contracts with men, with an implicit understanding that wives will provide some labour harvesting or processing foods.
• Women often lack the knowledge, skills, mobility and confidence to negotiate with powerful buyers.

Recommendations to empower women in agriculture include:

• Some agricultural businesses offer development packages to small-scale farmers, providing them the opportunity to access resources and services, and to build productivity. Often these packages are promoted and accessed via workers cooperative. In order for women to benefit women's farmers associations need to be strengthened and supported to engage with agribusinesses and their participation and leadership needs to be supported in mixed-gender farmer groups.
• Implement gender-responsive approaches to improve productivity in subsistence farming. For example, it is important to consult with women regarding seed varieties because their preferences may include factors such as nutrition and taste whereas researchers may be more focused solely on productivity
• Improve knowledge about women in commercial agriculture. For example, value chain studies should routinely integrate gender analyses and obtain gender-disaggregated data.
• Engender policies and practices of agribusinesses. For example: contract directly with women farmers; provide women direct access to resources and services; strengthen women’s roles in mixed-gender farmer groups.