Food security experts know one thing for sure: women smallholder farmers grow a significant proportion of the world’s food supply. Unfortunately, they face unique injustices and obstacles that prevent them from achieving their full potential.
For instance, government-sponsored agricultural extension services tend to overlook women farmers, meaning that they miss out on training opportunities. This may be because extension officers tend to be male or a reflection of larger societal biases.
When governments launch major agricultural productivity pushes, such programs also tend to prioritize male farmers over their female neighbors. Even farm implement rental schemes suffer from a gender gap—women are too often second in line to access machinery.
A strong if somewhat hazy economic case
Several studies attempt to quantify how much the world can benefit from empowering smallholder women farmers. No definitive answers have yet emerged, but a 2020 study published in the Journal of Development Studies summarizes what we do know and where our gaps in knowledge remain.
Citing earlier research by the United Nations, the authors of this report point to evidence suggesting that closing the gender gap in agriculture would substantially reduce malnourishment. “A broad base of evidence reports on benefits from improved nutrition through improved labor productivity and reduced health costs,” the authors noted. They cite evidence from Tanzania, where they argue that simply extending basic credit and other benefits to women would lower the food-insecure population in that country.
Via a thorough literature review, this report points to other research showing how closing this gender gap could result in a boost to agricultural productivity by about $100 million per year in Malawi and at least $67 million per year in Uganda. That’s not all. “The 2016 Africa Human Development Report estimates that gender inequality costs sub-Saharan Africa approximately 95 USD billion per year,” the authors wrote, “and a 2015 McKinsey Global Institute study suggests that 12–28 USD trillion could be added to the global economy if women achieved parity with men in economic outcomes.”
In agriculture, where women operate more than half of smallholder farms globally, achieving gender parity could improve nutrition and health as well as incomes. Women often grow nutritious and high-value crops like fruits and vegetables, which are often overlooked in research and agricultural extension programs.
“To the extent that women’s decisions to plant more diverse and nutritious crops and to allocate more household income to food improve nutrition, empowering women in agriculture could have significant benefits,” the authors wrote. However, they admit that more research is necessary. “Findings suggest returns to investing in female farmers could be significant in various contexts but estimates of economic returns to empowering women in agriculture remain limited.”
Doing our part
Grow Further has several grants likely to help women farmers, including a research and development effort in northern Ghana that’s seeking to develop the world’s first commercial variety of Bambara groundnut, a nutrition-packed and drought-resistant superfood. We believe that this project not only holds enormous potential to help improve Ghana’s food security, but also that it will benefit women smallholders in particular because Bambara groundnut tends to be cultivated by women. We’re not the only ones who think so.
A study out of Nigeria published last year argues that helping women farmers there commercialize the Bambara groundnut would be of immense benefit to that nation and beyond.
“Household food security levels increase as commercialization levels increase,” wrote Ridwan Mukaila, a researcher at the University of Nigeria and author of this study. “Thus, agricultural commercialization plays a crucial role in food security. However, several barriers limit women’s market participation.”
Mukaila is particularly concerned about how women farmers Bambara groundnut farmers in Nigeria are often denied bank loans and lines of credit that would help them invest in growing more food and getting their crops to better markets. But that’s just one problem.
Close this and other parts of the agricultural gender gap, Mukaila says, and everyone will benefit. Whether it’s for greater Bambara groundnut cultivation or other food crops, what’s needed is “policy intervention that will support smallholder women farmers to promote agricultural commercialization needed to increase food availability and combat hunger in society,” he wrote.
We won’t discriminate against any farmer or farm program based on gender, and neither should anyone else. But Grow Further is proud to be supporting projects that stand to greatly benefit women smallholder farmers because we know where this will lead. As was said in an earlier article in this newsletter, women hold up half the sky. By lifting women farmers we are lifting everyone, achieving greater food security for all.
— Grow Further
Photo credit: A woman feeds her fish at her tilapia farm in Mozambique. USAID/public domain.
