Women Smallholders
Women grow much of the world’s food on a fraction of the world’s land, credit, and tools. Close that gap — give women farmers the same resources as men — and yields rise, hunger falls, and less forest is cleared to make up the difference. Justice and climate, in the same act.
The effect compounds within years. Put it in place and it keeps working.
Origins
The invisibility of women’s farming is old and deliberate. Colonial agricultural policy, and much of the development apparatus that followed it, addressed itself almost entirely to men: land title was registered to male heads of household, extension officers trained male farmers, credit was extended against collateral women were not permitted to hold. Where custom and law treated the man as “the farmer,” the woman doing much of the actual farming became statistically and institutionally invisible.
That invisibility had consequences that compounded across generations. A woman without title cannot use land as collateral; without collateral she cannot borrow; without credit she cannot buy improved seed or fertiliser; without inputs her yields stay low; and low yields are then read, perversely, as evidence that women are less capable farmers — which justifies directing the next round of resources to men. It is a closed loop, and it was built.
The turning point in evidence came when institutions like the Food and Agriculture Organization began measuring the gap rigorously and, crucially, decomposing it — showing that it was made of missing inputs, not missing ability. That reframing turned a matter often dismissed as culture into a solvable question of access, resources, and rights.
What it actually is
In much of the developing world, farming is done substantially by women. They plant, weed, harvest, tend livestock, and carry the crop to market — and yet they own little of the land they work, receive a small share of the credit, and are routinely last in line for improved seed, fertiliser, tools, training, and the advice of agricultural extension services.
The result is a measurable and entirely unjust gap: women farmers produce lower yields than men on comparable land. The crucial finding, established across many studies and many countries, is why. It is not skill. Give a woman farmer the same inputs a man has, and she achieves the same yield. The gap is a gap in access, not ability — which means it is a gap that can be closed by decision rather than by miracle.
Closing it does three things at once. It is a matter of basic justice, owed to the women themselves. It raises the food supply, easing hunger. And — the part that makes it a climate solution — it lets existing farmland feed more people, which relieves the pressure to clear forest and break new ground for agriculture. More food from the same land is, in carbon terms, forest not felled.
The numbers
The scale of women’s farming. Women make up on the order of 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, ranging from around a fifth in parts of Latin America to roughly half across sub-Saharan Africa and much of Asia.
The yield gap. Women farmers typically achieve yields 20 to 30 percent lower than men — a gap that studies attribute overwhelmingly to unequal access to inputs, not to any difference in ability.
What closing it would do. The FAO has estimated that giving women farmers the same access to resources as men could raise output on their farms by 20 to 30 percent, lift total agricultural production in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent, and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 percent — on the order of 100 to 150 million people.
The ownership gap behind it. Where data exist, women are between roughly 3 and 20 percent of landholders — a fraction wildly out of proportion to their share of the labour. More recent FAO work puts the cost of gender inequality across food systems at close to a trillion dollars of foregone output.
The climate link. Higher yields on existing land reduce the pressure to expand agriculture into forest and grassland, which is one of the largest single sources of land-use emissions.
Why it matters
This is one of the cleaner solutions on the whole site, in the sense that there is almost no tension to manage: the just thing and the useful thing and the climate-smart thing are simply the same thing, and the only reason the gap persists is that closing it means redistributing power.
We are drawn to it for a reason that runs deep in this project’s values. So much climate discussion imagines the future as sacrifice — less, smaller, colder, later. Here is a solution that is pure addition: a woman gains title to the land she already farms, or the credit to buy the seed she already knows how to plant, and she grows more food, feeds her family better, earns more, sends her children to school, and, as a side effect, a hectare of forest somewhere is not cleared to make up the shortfall. Nobody loses anything but an injustice.
There is also a well-documented multiplier that ought to be said plainly: when women control agricultural income, a larger share of it flows to family nutrition, health, and children’s education than when men control it. So the benefits of closing this gap do not stop at the field. They compound through the household and into the next generation, which is precisely the kind of long, quiet, generational return this project exists to honour.
Under Our Food and Our Humanity both, this is what a solution should look like: give people who are already doing the work the tools and the standing they have been denied, and let the good results follow on their own.
What it actually takes
Secure women’s land rights. Title is the hinge everything else turns on: without it there is no collateral, no credit, no confidence to invest in the soil. Reforming land tenure so that women can own and inherit is the single highest-leverage move.
Open access to credit and inputs. Financial products designed around women’s realities, and supply chains that actually reach them, close the input gap that drives the yield gap.
Bring extension and training to women directly. Advisory services have historically spoken to men. Reaching women farmers directly, often through women extension agents, transfers knowledge that has been systematically withheld.
Recognise women as farmers in law and data. What is not counted is not served. Registering women as the farmers they are is a precondition for everything else.
Reduce the unpaid-care burden. Women farmers also carry most of the household and care labour. Easing that — water access, childcare, labour-saving tools — frees time and energy for the farm.
Where it matters most
The gap is largest, and the gains from closing it greatest, where women make up the biggest share of farmers and hold the smallest share of land and credit.
Across the East African Rift and the Sahel, women perform a very large share of the farming while holding a small fraction of the title — the exact conditions under which closing the resource gap yields the most food and spares the most land.
In the Congo Basin, women’s farming feeds much of the region even as insecurity and weak tenure keep them from the inputs that would raise their yields — and higher yields here are directly forest spared.
Across the Western Ghats and the wider subcontinent, and in the highland farms of the Andes and the Himalaya, women increasingly manage farms alone as men migrate for work, yet inherit and borrow on unequal terms — making secure tenure and credit especially decisive.
How to tell it’s being done well
Does it secure land rights, or just hand out inputs? Inputs help, but title is the hinge. A programme that ignores tenure is treating the symptom.
Does it reach women directly? Resources routed through male heads of household often never arrive. The honest test is whether women farmers themselves gain access.
Does it count women as farmers? Recognition in law and data is a precondition for everything else, and its absence is a red flag.
Does it ease the care burden? A programme that adds farming resources without acknowledging women’s unpaid labour load is only half-designed.
Is it led by the women it serves? Solutions shaped by women farmers succeed and endure; solutions designed for them without them tend to miss the real constraints.
Where this matters most
Who is working on this
We are researching which organizations in our directory of 8,493 actively work on this solution, and we only list an organization once we have verified it. That research is ongoing. In the meantime, search the directory yourself:
Questions
Why do women farmers have lower yields?
Not because of skill. Studies consistently find that when women farmers have the same access to land, credit, seed, fertiliser, tools, and training as men, they achieve the same yields. The 20 to 30 percent gap is a gap in access, not ability, which means it can be closed by policy.
How is this a climate solution?
Closing the gap lets existing farmland produce more food, which reduces the pressure to clear forest and grassland to expand agriculture. Land-use change from agricultural expansion is one of the largest sources of emissions, so more food from the same land means forest not felled.
How much could closing the gap achieve?
The FAO has estimated it could raise output on women's farms by 20 to 30 percent, lift total agricultural production in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent, and reduce the number of hungry people by 12 to 17 percent, roughly 100 to 150 million people.
What is the single most important step?
Securing women's rights to own and inherit land. Title is the hinge: without it there is no collateral, no credit, and little confidence to invest in improving the soil. Everything else follows more easily once tenure is secure.
Why does women's income matter beyond the farm?
When women control agricultural income, a larger share tends to flow to family nutrition, health, and children's education than when men control it. So closing the gap compounds through the household and into the next generation.
Sources
- FAO - The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-11: Women in Agriculture Source of the yield-gap and hunger-reduction figures.
- FAO - Closing the gender gap in agriculture
- FAO (2023) - The status of women in agrifood systems
- Project Drawdown - Health and Education / Food sector solutions
The solution taxonomy follows the framework popularised by Project Drawdown. The analysis above is our own; for their carbon modeling and rankings, visit them directly.