According to the Committee on World Food Security of the United Nations, food security is the state in

which all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to enough, safe, and nourishing
food that satisfies their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

However, over the next few decades, there will be major but unknowable effects on food security due to
factors such as climate change, population growth, rising food prices, and environmental stressors.

Women as Food Producers

Women produce more than 50 percent of the food grown worldwide, according to
FAO 

 Efficiency: Gender is crucial form the point of view of economic

efficiency. In the agricultural sector, inequalities in areas of control of and
access to resources between men and women generate massive
inefficiencies in production, which, if resolved, could improve food
production on a worldwide level. An FAO study suggests that if women
had the same access to productive resources as men, the production of
their farms would increase by 20-30%. This, in turn, would increase
agricultural production in developing countries by 2.5-4% and decrease
the number of hungry people by 12%.

 Equity: Women in rural areas have less access to financial services,

production activities, technologies, and education compared to men
(FAO). A focus on gender can help us reduce inequity in resource
distribution, which has historically been negatively influenced by
differing social roles of men and women. According to the FAO, it is
poverty and not the availability of food that is the principal factor in food
insecurity. In other words, although there is plenty of food, people don’t
have sufficient financial resources to access it.

 Empowering women via participatory spaces that allow them to identify

specific actions to promote and recognize their roles in agriculture.

 Improving access to productive activities for women, mainly via land

access. This can be achieved through projects that incentivize extending
land titles to women and implementing awareness campaigns directed at
 women to inform them about their rights and responsibilities with respect
to land ownership.
 Developing best practices with respect to gender in agriculture and
farming, and identifying schedules and specific actions so that women can
actively participate in trainings and other spaces.
 Incentivizing the adoption of advanced technologies >among female
producers.
 Identifying lines of action with respect to agricultural innovation that
benefit women and reduce the burden of labor.
 Enabling the participation of women in government
settings, agricultural production associations, and commissions.
 Collecting data regarding access to productive resources and use of
time that are filtered by gender in order to better understand the role of
women in agriculture and to quantify their work.