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Both women and men play critical roles in agriculture throughout the world, producing, processing and providing the food we eat. Rural women in particular are responsible for half of the world's food production and produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries. Yet, despite their contribution to global food security, women farmers are frequently underestimated and overlooked in development strategies. Rural women are the main producers of the world's staple crops - rice, wheat, maize - which provide up to 90 percent of the rural poor's food intake. Women sow, weed, apply fertilizer and pesticides, harvest and thresh the crops. Their contribution to secondary crop production, such as legumes and vegetables, is even greater. Grown mainly in home gardens, these crops provide essential nutrients and are often the only food available during the lean seasons or if the main harvest fails. Women's specialized knowledge about genetic resources for food and agriculture makes them essential custodians of agro-bioversity. In the livestock sector, women feed and milk the larger animals, while raising poultry and small animals such as sheep, goats, rabbits and guinea pigs. Also, once the harvest is in, rural women provide most of the labour for post-harvest activities, taking responsibility for storage, handling, stocking, processing and marketing.
Although rural women are assuming an increasingly prominent role in agriculture, they remain among the most disadvantaged of populations. War, the rural-to-urban migration of men in search of paid employment and rising mortalities attributed to HIV/AIDS has led to a rise in the numbers of female-headed households in the developing world. This 'feminization of agriculture' has placed a considerable burden on women's capacity to produce, provide, and prepare food in the face of already considerable obstacles.
FAO studies demonstrate that while women in most developing countries are the mainstay of agricultural sectors, the farm labour force and food systems (and day-to-day family subsistence), they have been the last to benefit from - or in some cases have been negatively affected by - prevailing economic growth and development processes. Gender bias and gender blindness persist: farmers are still generally perceived as 'male' by policy-makers, development planners and agricultural service deliverers. For this reason, women find it more difficult than men to gain access to valuable resources such as land, credit and agricultural inputs, technology, extension, training and services that would enhance their production capacity.
Despite the fact that women are the world's principal food producers and providers, they remain 'invisible' partners in development. A lack of available gender disaggregated data means that women's contribution to agriculture in particular is poorly understood and their specific needs ignored in development planning. This extends to matters as basic as the design of farm tools. But women's full potential in agriculture must be realized if the goal of the 1996 World Food Summit - to halve the number of hungry people in the world by 2015 - is to be achieved. FAO recognizes that the empowerment of women is key to raising levels of nutrition, improving the production and distribution of food and agricultural products and enhancing the living conditions of rural populations. FAO's Plan of Action for Women in Development (1996-2001) ensures that gender concerns and women participants are integrated in all relevant FAO projects and activities. It aims to give women equal access to and control of land and other productive resources, increase their participation in decision- and policy-making, reduce their workloads and enhance their opportunities for paid employment and income.
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