Rooting for Change: Empowering Women Farmers to Grow Global Food Security 🌽

— Written by Lyle Jarvis

A Global Paradox 🌍

Smallholder farmers are the backbone of global food production, providing around one-third of the world's food and nearly 70% of Africa's supply. Despite propping up our communities, they only receive less than 1% of global climate finance, leaving them especially vulnerable to climate impacts.

This gap isn't just about funding; it’s also a $1 trillion missed economic opportunity that could be unlocked by prioritizing these farmers and the food they supply to communities.

As climate change accelerates, smallholder farmers in rain-fed systems are facing an unfortunate double climate jeopardy. For starters, the severe extreme heat events, prolonged droughts, floods, make for lower yields, more crop failure, food insecurity and bring along new pests/diseases.

But perhaps even worse, coping with these changes forces them to adjust their practices, often in the form of more pesticides. In fact, over 76% of small farmers in India reported that the incidence of spraying pesticides has more than doubled. Beyond the health concerns, these pesticides cost money and drive up operational costs. In turn, farmers are going deeper into debt, undermining their soil health, and the feedback loop is only getting worse.

Empowering Women: A Key Climate and Community Solution 🌍

Despite the fact that Africa’s female farmers produce at least 70% of the continent's food, they own significantly less land than men. This means they have substantially less agricultural decision-making power, limited access to credit and other economic tools to lift themselves, their children and their community out of poverty. In divorce or widowhood, wives commonly lose all rights to land, regardless of their contributions to the farm.

Empowering women and girls is absolutely crucial to ensuring food security across the globe. In fact, when empowered with access to better education, women are far more likely to be involved in climate-smart agriculture, advocate for healthier communities and more.

Ahead of COP30, our friends at Project Dandelion have launched a global campaign urging leaders to increase investment in smallholder farmers.

Project Dandelion on Instagram: see the campaign’s debut post!

Learn more about the campaign here, and learn how you can spread the word.

Take climate action today: the campaign features a unique one-click public pressure tool to encourage and support organizations addressing the finance gap for smallholders. Click on “Speak out” to make your voice heard.

Bonus listen 🎧️ : The International Fund for Agricultural Development hosted former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson on their podcast, Farms. Food. Future, to talk about working with Project Dandelion to launch the campaign. Listen to the episode here, or read an excerpt!

The Road Ahead 💹 

Redirecting climate finance toward these smallholder farmers (beyond that 1% we talked about earlier) is a huge challenge. The private sector often sees agricultural investments as too risky, which is why we need a mix of public and philanthropic money to start de-risking these types of opportunities. Basically, we need to make them more mainstream to help attract larger private investments.

The good news is, new tech is making it easier to bridge that gap. As farmers respond to increasing climate challenges, we’re keeping our eyes on these solutions:

• Climate-Resilient Agriculture: Implementing innovative farming practices like improved water management and agroforestry helps farmers adapt to climate change and reduce post-harvest losses.

• Clean Tech Solutions: Investing in clean tech solutions, such as decentralized, solar-powered cold storage units like ColdHubs in Nigeria, can boost farmers' incomes and food security by preserving harvests, while also delivering climate benefits by preventing food waste.

• Strategic Investment & De-risking: Substantial funding from philanthropic organizations like the Gates Foundation, coupled with strategies to de-risk the agricultural sector for private capital, is crucial for empowering smallholder farmers, especially women.

• Digital Transformation and Access to Credit: The integration of AI and satellite technology provides real-time data, manages risks, and improves access to much-needed credit for millions of farmers globally, enabling them to grow their operations.

Further reading:
Making Climate Finance Work in Agriculture (The World Bank)
Examining the Climate Finance Gap for Small-Scale Agriculture (Climate Policy Initiative)

What We’re Watching 🎥 and Reading 📚 This Week

Searching for more positive and informative climate content? Look no further!

1. ☀️ California’s first solar-covered water canal is now generating power (ABC 7)

2. 🫂 Women in Mexico protect ancient Aztec farms and save a vanishing
   Ecosystem (The Associated Press)

3. New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule (Grist)