The world is wor­ried about food in­se­cu­ri­ty!

But for a typ­i­cal woman, her world is a dai­ly de­ci­sion ma­trix of what else to sac­ri­fice to feed her fam­i­ly and main­tain healthy choic­es.

Farm­ing is at the root of food se­cu­ri­ty. Women are at the root of house­hold food se­cu­ri­ty.

So, the ‘agri­cul­ture-women’ com­bo is a win-win for healthy fam­i­lies, self-re­liant com­mu­ni­ties and sus­tain­able economies, all el­e­ments of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals. In 2022 and be­yond, the old say­ings of ‘grow what you eat’ and ‘waste not, want not’, must lit­er­al­ly be seen as life and health choic­es.

In the Caribbean, women grav­i­tate to­wards agribusi­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly food pro­cess­ing. They start-off small, em­pow­ered to evolve in­to ‘boss la­dy’ sta­tus, with ex­pec­ta­tions of grow­ing their brand. But as most mi­cro and small agripreneurs (AgriM­SEs) re­flect, this jour­ney is not for the faint heart­ed. Women face sev­er­al bi­as­es qual­i­fy­ing for fi­nanc­ing, own­ing as­sets and ac­cess­ing eco­nom­ic re­sources. But they per­se­vere. This per­se­ver­ance needs to be re­ward­ed and en­abled to un­lock the sti­fled po­ten­tial of women as eco­nom­ic agents and dri­vers of change. Ef­fec­tive sup­port to women in agribusi­ness is al­so a win-win to bet­ter en­able them to achieve a thriv­ing life-work life bal­ance.

What Is the Role of Women in Food Se­cu­ri­ty?

Food se­cu­ri­ty isn’t just a ques­tion of avail­abil­i­ty of food, nor of the fi­nan­cial re­sources to ac­cess it. Peo­ple must al­so have con­sis­tent ac­cess to qual­i­ty, nu­tri­tious foods in or­der to en­sure food se­cu­ri­ty.

It is re­port­ed that, “If women had the same ac­cess to agro-eco­nom­ic re­sources as men, agri­cul­tur­al and farm­ing pro­duc­tion would in­crease and we could feed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 mil­lion more peo­ple.” (FAO, 2021).

The role of women is key in agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and in food se­cu­ri­ty. Women are the pri­ma­ry farm­ers and pro­duc­ers in a large part of the world; how­ev­er, their work con­tin­ues to go large­ly un­recog­nised. In fact, in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries women com­prise ap­prox­i­mate­ly 43% of the agri­cul­tur­al work­force.

The Gen­der Gap in Agri­cul­ture

Women make up ap­prox­i­mate­ly half of the world’s farm­ers, but there is mas­sive in­equity be­tween male and fe­male farm­ers—es­pe­cial­ly in the de­vel­op­ing world.

These in­equities are most pro­nounced in terms of women lack­ing equal ac­cess to and con­trol over pro­duc­tive re­sources. To ad­dress this ‘gen­der gap’ in agri­cul­ture, there are nu­mer­ous NGOs, mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies, and donors work­ing to im­prove women’s en­gage­ment in and em­pow­er­ment through agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty pro­gram­ming.

The IICA- UN Women MoU

The In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) is the spe­cial­ized agency for agri­cul­ture of the In­ter-Amer­i­can Sys­tem that sup­ports the ef­forts of Mem­ber States to achieve agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and rur­al well-be­ing.

This AgriMSE-Ex­change is a di­a­logue and net­work­ing plat­form to con­nect AgriM­SEs, par­tic­u­lar­ly women, to a pow­er­house fe­male en­tre­pre­neur, one of our “home­grown” glob­al trail­blaz­ers, Co­lette Cyrus-Bur­nett, CEO, Glob­al Food War­rior has ‘been-there’ and ‘done-that’, and is 100% com­mit­ted to ad­vo­cat­ing for the rights and re­sources for women in agribusi­ness. If you want to con­nect with peo­ple who can in­spire and mo­ti­vate you to keep on grow­ing, then this event is for you! It will al­so be your in­tro­duc­tion to IICA and UN Women work­ing to­geth­er to break-the-bias against women as eco­nom­ic agents.

Reg­is­ter, con­nect and be part of the glob­al food war­rior move­ment!

https://us02web.zoom.us/meet­ing/reg­is­ter/tZUs­cOy­oqT0jGNcJl4VrURR_GD5Le6Yioeli