Authors: Hélène Botreau and Marc J. Cohen.
Affiliated organization: Oxfam
Type of publication: Report
Date of publication: July 2019
Introduction
The global food price crisis of 2007–08 underscored how fragile livelihoods are among the world’s extremely vulnerable people, as it drove 44 million people in developing countries into poverty. In the aftermath of the crisis, in 2009 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that almost one billion people worldwide were undernourished.
The crisis disproportionately affected women, as this briefing paper will show. In 2009 the UN World Food Programme (WFP) calculated that women and girls accounted for 60% of chronically hungry people around the world. The flurry of action in the months and years following the price spike brought some hope that the world’s governments were prepared to tackle the structural factors behind the crisis, which had a severe impact on vulnerable people’s resilience to shocks and especially the resilience of women small-scale agricultural producers.
Ten years later, despite the international commitment to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 of zero hunger, too many of the policies that precipitated the food price crisis remain in place. The number of food insecure people has risen since 2014 and in 2017 reached 821 million, with women smallholder farmers amongst the worst affected and far from realizing their human right to adequate food.
Underlying structural factors (2008–11) and their impacts on women
What led to the food prices crisis?
The term ‘global food price crisis’ usually refers to one of the biggest price surges in a period of extreme volatility for primary commodities, mainly the most widely consumed cereals, which had peaks in the second half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 and another spike in 2010–11. Between March 2007 and March 2008, corn (maize) prices rose 31%, those of soybeans jumped 87% and wheat prices ballooned 130%. The price of rice climbed four-fold during January-April 2008, as several major exporters embargoed foreign sales of this lightly traded commodity.
Global food prices declined from their peak in June 2008, as the world economy fell into recession. Prices remained relatively stable until the first half of 2010 and then began rising again, reaching an all-time high in February 2011. Severe drought in major exporting countries was the key short-term factor contributing to this second spike.
The rise in prices pushed vulnerable people, who pre-crisis spent 50% or more of their incomes to buy food, further into poverty and increased their struggle to maintain basic consumption levels. The crisis posed a severe threat to the right to adequate food for millions of people.
STRUCTURAL FACTORS
Liberalization of agriculture
In the decade prior to the crisis and following adoption of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture of 1995 and the World Food Summit in 1996, there was a major shift in global food and agriculture, with lower trade barriers and more open markets. However, countries with weak market infrastructures and those that relied on a small number of export commodities did not gain from liberalization and faced risks associated with increases in world food prices, which would mean considerably higher import bills, potentially requiring them to spend their foreign-exchange reserves. For farmers, this shift encouraged less production of traditional food crops – which frequently were the crops that women farmers produced – in favour of crops for domestic and export markets, increasing their exposure to the volatility of those markets and their dependence on purchased inputs.
Climate change
Climate change is resulting in more frequent and more severe heat waves, droughts and floods, which can decimate farm production. The effects of climate contributed to food price increases in 2007–08 and also in 2010, with severe droughts in Australia, Canada, Argentina and the US, all major cereals producers. There were droughts in East Africa in 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2011. The last of these affected more than 13 million people and resulted in the famine in Somalia that killed 260,000 people.
SUPPLY AND DEMAND FACTORS LEADING TO THE FOOD PRICE CRISIS
Supply
Slowing growth in productivity Due to structural factors – such as a more restricted government role in agriculture in developing countries, less agricultural investment, reduced public agricultural research expenditures and the effects of climate change – growth in food crop production slowed from the mid-1990s. For cereals, which cover over half of the world’s farm land, yield growth fell from 3% annually in the 1960s to a little more than half of that in the 1990s, then increased to nearly 2% in the 2000s.
In the 21st century, increases in the prices of fertilizer and oil, which are key farm inputs, have exceed those for agricultural produce. This has created further financial difficulties for farmers, as most developing country governments have reduced or eliminated subsidies on inputs and assistance with credit and marketing for smallholders.
Demand
Between 1960 and 2010 the world’s urban population tripled, and this was associated with a growing urban middle class. Food consumption habits evolved and all regions in the world saw increased meat consumption and thus a rising demand for grains for animal feed.
During this same period, global food trade concentrated on just four main crops: rice, maize (this, in particular, is an important animal feed as well as a major direct source of human food in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America) and wheat, plus soybeans (directly consumed by humans, an input into processed foods, an animal feed and also a source of biodiesel). The trends of dependence on the three major global cereals and on imports for food supplies have been simultaneous and mutually reinforcing. In sub Saharan Africa and South Asia – which are home to the majority of the world’s food insecure people and thus constitute hunger’s centre of gravity – consumption of these cereals has steadily displaced traditional staples such as millet, sorghum, bananas, cassava, potatoes, sweet potatoes and beans over a long period. The trend was remarked on by people interviewed during the 2007–08 crisis, who repeatedly mentioned the decline of ‘traditional’ foods due to reduced availability, higher cost and longer preparation time.
Impacts and long-term effects on women smallholder farmers
The events of 2007–08 brought into plain view the cracks in an unsustainable food system that was already crushing the basic livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The structural factors outlined above (liberalization of the agri-food system, concentration in input and output markets, a decrease in public investments in agriculture, declining aid to agriculture) showed how unfair and unbalanced the system had become, privileging big agri-food businesses and making poor people even more vulnerable to the conjunctural factors of the crisis. These short-term factors triggered the crisis and further impoverished the poorest people, denying them their human right to adequate food and nutrition and illustrating the global food system’s failures.
Rural people, and especially farmers, were on the front line. People living in rural areas are amongst the poorest in the Global South and at the time of the crisis three-quarters of them were living on less than the equivalent of $1 a day, and spending up to 80% of their earnings on food.
Already precarious rural livelihoods (due to geographic, economic and political isolation, poor access to markets, limited opportunities for work, low productivity and seasonal and long-term migration) amplified the threat of soaring agricultural prices, which affected not only consumers and urban dwellers but also food producers. The overwhelming majority of small-scale farmers are also net food purchasers, with very high exposure to price increases. In theory, higher prices offered opportunities to farmers who are net food sellers, but price increases for agricultural inputs (fertilizers, fuel etc.) offset this possibility.
The structural factors outlined above (liberalization of the agri-food system, concentration in input and output markets, a decrease in public investments in agriculture, declining aid to agriculture) showed how unfair and unbalanced the system had become, privileging big agri-food businesses and making poor people even more vulnerable to the conjunctural factors of the crisis
Women smallholder farmers have been disproportionately affected
Because gender inequalities remain very strong in agriculture, women farmers are particularly at risk of food insecurity, especially in times of crisis. Women farmers face multi-level discrimination Rural women account for one in four people on earth and on average for nearly half the agricultural labour force in developing countries. Despite women’s crucial food-security roles, which include farming, food processing, marketing, and ensuring household consumption and nutrition, they face discrimination and frequently are in a weak bargaining position. In addition, other forms of discrimination (based on e.g. race, class, caste or religion) often reinforce gender inequality.
- At the level of society: social inequalities come from socially constructed barriers to accessing productive and financial resources that also hinder social participation and political representation. Patriarchal norms leading to power imbalances between women and men create disadvantages for women in agriculture, specifically in land rights (small plots, difficulties accessing ownership, discriminatory inheritance rights), productive resources (no access to credit markets, extension services or inputs), unpaid work, insecure employment and low levels of participation in decision-making.
- In the household: cultural practices and intrahousehold bargaining power can also determine the allocation of household incomes to food and care needs. Women’s weaker position within the family and social standards that favour boys over girls lead to poorer nutrition among women and girls.
Addressing women’s food insecurity in a (more) unstable and broken food system
Increased challenges for food and nutrition security for women
The lack of progress on realization of the right to adequate food for all – and specifically for women smallholder farmers – and thus on achieving SDG 2 by 2030 results from instability in the factors that contribute to achieving food security, and this has led to food price volatility. All this is largely the consequence of gender-blind political choices that have failed to tackle the broken agri-food system.
Despite women’s crucial food-security roles, which include farming, food processing, marketing, and ensuring household consumption and nutrition, they face discrimination and frequently are in a weak bargaining position. In addition, other forms of discrimination (based on e.g. race, class, caste or religion) often reinforce gender inequality
Ten years after the 2007-08 food price spike, the main structural factors that marginalized women smallholder farmers have still not been addressed and the most likely food security scenarios do not seem to have become any more optimistic.
Hunger is on the rise, as the 2018 UN report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition showed: we are back to where we were a decade ago and in 2017 some 821 million people were undernourished. Each year from 2016 to 2018 more than 100 million people have faced periods of acute hunger. The number of African countries relying on external food aid has increased from 20 in 2009 to 31 in 2019.
Violent conflict, the effects of climate change and economic instability are major factors leading to food insecurity and they contribute to pushing already marginalized people into extreme situations of poverty and even famine-like conditions, as in Yemen.
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, there is already evidence of farmers migrating as temperatures increase, exacerbating inequality as those least able to cope are forced to uproot their lives. Marginalized communities – including indigenous, pastoral, agricultural and coastal communities – will suffer the most as food and water become less available, health risks increase and their lives and livelihoods are jeopardized.
Hunger is on the rise, as the 2018 UN report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition showed: we are back to where we were a decade ago and in 2017 some 821 million people were undernourished. Each year from 2016 to 2018 more than 100 million people have faced periods of acute hunger. The number of African countries relying on external food aid has increased from 20 in 2009 to 31 in 2019
Women farmers remain on the razor edge of extreme shocks to the system and in a warming world, with a growing number of hungry people and more conflicts, they face ever greater risks. Indeed, according to FAO, ‘Women are slightly more likely to be food insecure than men in every region of the world’, especially if they live in rural areas, where poverty and food insecurity are very much linked, and especially in a context of increased reliance on markets and a decrease in subsistence agriculture. Actual food stresses are linked to prices and access to markets rather than to production, but women are vulnerable in all dimensions of food security: availability, access, utilization and stability.
More often than not, the face of malnutrition is female
In 2017, global food insecurity rose for the third consecutive year, and women are the most affected: a third of the world’s women of reproductive age suffer from anaemia, usually due to iron-deficient diets. This also means risks for the health and nutrition of their children and has long-term impacts on development. Worldwide, anaemia is a contributing or sole cause of 20–40% of maternal deaths. Anaemic women are twice as likely to die during or shortly after pregnancy as non-anaemic mothers. Because anaemia caused by iron deficiency results in reduced learning capacity and less productive workers, it is estimated to reduce gross domestic product (GDP) by 4% annually, particularly in African and SouthEast Asian countries.
Women’s malnutrition frequently stems from poverty and unequal intra-household relations. Women who have access to financial resources enjoy greater dietary diversity, and in rural areas women farmers who control resources tend to have better-quality diets.
Indeed, according to FAO, ‘Women are slightly more likely to be food insecure than men in every region of the world’, especially if they live in rural areas, where poverty and food insecurity are very much linked, and especially in a context of increased reliance on markets and a decrease in subsistence agriculture
Even when food is available and relatively accessible, people may not fully meet their nutritional needs. In countries where the calorie supply is adequate, there are still high levels of child stunting, e.g. Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali and Nepal. Climate shocks, conflicts and social factors that increase women farmers’ work burdens put their own health at risk and limit their ability to engage in recommended feeding practices for infants and young children.
Closing the gender gap: transforming rather than mainstreaming
More investments in agricultural development, even if they target small family farms, do not automatically benefit women and food security. The key questions related to whether agricultural development promotes gender equality include whether women are able to access resources, whether they actually can make decisions about the fruits of productivity and income gains and whether development efforts help them to meet their needs and aspirations.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) showed in 2017 that men and women do not benefit equally from foreign investments in agriculture. Though its analysis looks at private investments, some of the faults detailed are also found in publicly funded development programmes:
- Foreign investors tend to reinforce existing inequality in land ownership and control by working only with men who have formal land rights. This can reduce rural women’s ability to use common lands to meet household needs.
- Women frequently have difficulties accessing credit and extension services, and so may be excluded from contract farming schemes. These factors also prevent them from benefitting from agricultural innovations.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) showed in 2017 that men and women do not benefit equally from foreign investments in agriculture. Though its analysis looks at private investments, some of the faults detailed are also found in publicly funded development programmes:
- Foreign investors tend to reinforce existing inequality in land ownership and control by working only with men who have formal land rights. This can reduce rural women’s ability to use common lands to meet household needs. • Women frequently have difficulties accessing credit and extension services, and so may be excluded from contract farming schemes. These factors also prevent them from benefitting from agricultural innovations.
Conclusion et recommendations
Multiple food supply and demand factors triggered the food price crisis of 2007–08. Price spikes also revealed how the structural evolution of the global food system has fomented inequalities in accessing food. The food price crisis has denied the right to adequate food to whole categories of people who have suffered long-term impacts. Women have experienced disproportionate effects because they face discrimination at both the societal level and within their own households, with profound effects on their right to food.
The global response to the crisis has been very visible, with many actors involved and numerous commitments, new initiatives and instruments launched by intergovernmental bodies, countries, global donors and private stakeholders. However, funding has been insufficient and the policy response has mainly targeted production issues instead of focusing on the right to food, especially of women.
After 10 years, global food security governance is highly fragmented, with the power of a small number of actors increasing dramatically. Those actors include major multinational corporations, the World Bank and the IMF and the G7 governments. The voices of the people who have been left food-insecure are seldom heard in policy discussions.
Funding targeted at women in agriculture is insignificant compared with other official funding, and this public disinvestment opens the door to other actors, such as the private sector, which has taken a ‘business as usual’ approach and makes gender equality in agriculture a low priority at best.
Guarantee participation and inclusiveness
- Developing country governments and donors should support inclusive agricultural transformation and create an enabling environment for both female and male farmers to exercise their rights. This should include reducing power imbalances and supporting national-level land reforms.
- Governments and donors must make women’s economic empowerment in agriculture a high priority. Actions should include greater support for women farmers’ organizations and for developing markets for crops that women tend to produce.
Increase foreign aid to agriculture
- Policies and funding should support and promote women smallholder farmers in achieving SDG 2 by facilitating the self-organization of women and women’s organizations.
- G7 leaders must pledge at the forthcoming Biarritz summit in August 2019 to increase financial commitments to gender equality in the Sahel region, including supporting small-scale agriculture, developing a relevant gender indicator and strengthening accountability on previous G7/ G8 initiatives.
- Donors should encourage multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank and IFAD, to increase the share of their agricultural spending that supports gender equality.
Collect sex-disaggregated data to assess gender inequalities in agriculture
- Research institutions and agrarian and economic policy forums should seek quality sex-disaggregated data, with strong gender indicators, from all actors, and especially from governments and donors reporting on gender policy markers. They should also lead robust qualitative research to understand women’s and men’s experiences in agriculture, rural development, food security and nutrition.
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