Women, food security and agriculture in global marketplace

The steep increase in global food prices has added nearly 100 million people to the numbers who are chronically hungry, pushing the world total to nearly 1 billion people. Amid a global financial crisis and further market instability, the number of poor people also is climbing, undoing significant gains made against hunger and poverty in the past decade. This paper reviews current thinking and practice on increasing agricultural productivity, both subsistence and commercial agriculture, and examines what is known about women’s roles in both sectors.

The paper argues that despite evidence that gender-informed approaches are needed to bolster women’s roles and productivity, they are not yet a mainstay of development and agricultural programmes. This gap persists largely because decision makers continue to regard women as home producers or “assistants” in farm households, and not as farmers and economic agents in their own right. The development community also still lacks some key data on women’s participation and roles in agriculture to better devise and refine programs.

The document advocates that new directions in development assistance and agricultural investments must recognise and support women’s involvement in the full agricultural value chain from production to processing to marketing. For small-scale and women farmers, the international community must support investments to improve subsistence farming, expand opportunities for commercial farming, and increase access to wider and more lucrative markets. For the millions of landless and land-poor women and men, the international community must expand opportunities for wage employment, both on- and off-farm.

Recommendations include:

1. Implement gender-responsive approaches to improve productivity in subsistence farming:

• Consultation 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

• Field trials that include women because recent experience with farmer field schools shows that women are more likely to adopt seeds, technologies and practices in which they are involved

• Extension services made available at times and places convenient to women, through social networks and information sources women are likely to access and with information adapted to their particular needs and circumstances.

2. Improve knowledge about women in commercial agriculture:

• Engender value chain analyses: Value chain studies should routinely integrate gender analysis and obtain gender-disaggregated data. Gendered value chain analyses will help identify whether or not women have a role in production and marketing of particular crops and to what extent. Further analysis can reveal constraints and opportunities and their causes by gender.

• Engender monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks: Gendered M&E frameworks are needed to understand progress, fine-tune performance and determine outcomes and impacts. It is also valuable for understanding what went right or wrong and why, and applying lessons learned in future programmes. It is important to determine up-front the gender indicators of interest and it may be both judicious and cost effective to select a limited and well chosen set of indicators.

3. Engender policies and practices of agribusinesses:

• Contract directly with women farmers: Agribusinesses and other companies should contract directly with women farmers so that women can directly accrue payment for their own labour instead of having to negotiate through their spouses. At a minimum, women and men should have joint contracts.

• Provide women direct access to resources and services: Women must be offered access to a whole package of services, technologies and training, market linkages provided by companies or development assistance programmes. These resources and services must be gender-relevant and responsive, informed by the best and most up-to-date knowledge and information about agricultural development.

• Strengthen women’s roles in mixed-gender farmer groups: If agribusiness companies choose to work through mixed-gender farmer groups, it is critical they ensure that women can participate fully and effectively. Women must have equal access to membership and its full rights and obligations, and with full voice and influence.

• Engage with rural women’s associations: In places where strong women’s groups exist or if women express a preference or readiness for entrepreneurial activity, agribusinesses should partner with them to deepen and expand their economic success.
  

• Improve wages, benefits and occupational mobility for women wage-workers in agribusinesses: Advancement for women wage-earners employed in agribusinesses depends in having access to opportunities to increase their skills and earnings.