“Women hold up half the sky.”
That famous quote is attributed to Mao Zedong, a historical but highly controversial figure. That said, this author has heard it repeated many times at the United Nations by top diplomats, UN Secretaries-General, aid officials, and more. The source of that quote may be controversial but the truth it communicates isn’t. If anything, it’s an understatement—women make up more than half of the world’s population given their longer lifespans.
Women also carry a disproportionate burden in smallholder agriculture.
By some estimates, most smallholder farms are run by women, and these farmers have the additional burden of tending to families and sustaining households.
Since March is Women’s History Month in the United States, we at Grow Further thought it’s only appropriate to highlight and recognize the outsized role women play in global food security. The importance of women in developing world agriculture cannot be overstated, which is why Grow Further is proud to partner with research and development initiatives that promise to transform the lives of small-scale farmers everywhere, especially women farmers.
The facts and figures
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) knows very well the important role women play in global agriculture and food security. This is especially true in Africa.
FAO estimates that “well over 50%” of the smallholder farm workforce in sub-Saharan Africa is comprised of women. Women assert themselves in agriculture in other regions, as well. “About half the labor force in agriculture is female in several countries in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Vietnam,” FAO said in its “The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems” report. Huge proportions of women are employed in food growing or food processing in developing countries, even though they are underrepresented in the overall labor force. “Agrifood systems are a key source of employment for young women, especially those aged 15-24,” FAO says.
Despite these facts, we know that women smallholder farmers face serious discrimination, even as they toil to keep their neighbors fed.
Banks typically overlook women smallholder farmers, refusing to even consider them for access to credit that might help them improve their farms and crop yields. Women are also neglected in government-led agricultural extension services, programs where governments dispatch experts to rural farming communities to share advice on how to grow more food and raise farm incomes. And when governments devise programs to give farmers access to farm implements and even irrigation, women smallholder farmers are typically the last in line to benefit from these initiatives.
In many countries, women typically grow different crops from men.
Grow Further is now partnering with researchers in Ghana to understand what women farmers want in their Bambara groundnuts and develop the world’s first commercial variety. The Bambara groundnut is a nutrition-packed potential superfood that’s resilient to droughts and dry spells. Governments and foundations around the world have long overlooked this crop. Why? For starters, it’s been long considered a “forgotten food” (we prefer “opportunity crop”) and not a key staple for shoring up food security. Also, the Bambara groundnut is seen in Ghana as something only women farmers grow, and thus there’s some historical stigma associated with it.
"Agrifood systems are a key source of employment for young women"
Leveling the playing field
FAO argues that the discrimination women smallholder farmers face is costing all of us dearly.
A 2023 FAO report on gender gaps in developing world farming finds that the discrimination women smallholder farmers face ends up costing the world $1 trillion annually in lost farm productivity. Closing these gender gaps would “increase global gross domestic product by nearly $1 trillion and reduce the number of food-insecure people by 45 million,” FAO argues in this report.
Simply closing these gender gaps and ending the implicit and explicit discrimination female smallholder farmers face would result in massive gains in global food security. For instance, a 2023 study out of China finds that women-run farms are less likely to practice crop diversification in their fields. These farms also appear to be more vulnerable to climate change given the lack of access to support systems women farmers suffer from. “Financial resources are the main obstacles for female farmers to increase crop diversity,” the researchers found.
Women hold up half the sky. They also grow more than half the food in many developing nations. We owe them more than our gratitude. We owe them access to the smallholder farm innovations and ideas that promise to boost crop yields for all farmers.
We at Grow Further are playing our part. We invite you and your friends to join us.
— Grow Further
Photo credit: Miriam Kitomali, a maize farmer in Tanzania. True Vision Productions.
