rural women

The food price crisis of 2007–08 had devastating impacts for the world’s poorest people, especially for smallholder farmers and in particular for women. Ten years on, new policies are needed to rebalance the system to meet the needs of smallholder communities, with a renewed focus on meeting the needs and aspirations of women.

Asgedech Wolde Tensay won the 2015 Female Food Heroes award in Ethiopia for her exemplary efforts to increase productivity in her farm by using new technologies. Born and raised in a small village far from the capital Addis Ababa, she dreamed of a very different life to the one she is living now.

Carolina Chelele won Season 5 of Female Food Heroes in Tanzania and has become a community leader. Now that she's a winner, the mother of four and the sole provider for her household educates family members and other people in her village about different farming methods.

Monica Maigari is a smallholder farmer and teacher from Madakiya, Nigeria. In 2014, her accomplishments as a farmer and women’s advocate won her recognition as an Oxfam Female Food Hero. Since then, she has deepened her local community involvement while sharing her expertise with influential audiences.

On a planet with enough food for everyone, 821 million people – one in nine – go hungry day after day, year after year. It doesn't have to be this way. The Female Food Heroes competition is an innovative Oxfam project which shows how local women farmers can help end world hunger.

An Oxfam analysis of policies and public investments in six countries shows that women farmers are not getting the resources they need to feed their families and communities and adapt to climate change.

Oxfam conducted research on government and donor investments in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania. It found that governments and donors are failing to provide women farmers with relevant and adequate support for farming and adapting to climate change.

Women farmers play a central role in small-scale agriculture. But they are held back by barriers that prevent them from feeding their families and reinvesting in their livelihoods. A real support would protect their rights, boost their productivity and unleash their potential to fight hunger, poverty and climate change.

Rwandan women head close to a third of agricultural households and provide almost two thirds of the labour on family farms. Despite this, they have very little control over the sale of cash crops. With the support of Oxfam, the women members of the Tuzamurane cooperative grow and sell pineapples together and are no longer trapped in a low income cycle.

In most of sub-Saharan Africa, maize is a staple food crop. This paper explores some of the reasons why maize markets fail and argues that a major reason is because there is so little trust or cooperation between governments and private traders.