Investing in women smallholder farmers is the key to halving hunger in Africa and results in twice as much growth as investment in any other sector[i], a new ActionAid report reveals.

Less than one per cent of the agriculture budget is targeted at women in the three countries researched by ActionAid – Malawi, Kenya and Uganda - despite women's central contribution to the production of food, reports Fertile Ground.

And international donors say that as little as ten per cent of their aid to agriculture goes to women farmers.

"An astonishing, three-quarters of Africa's malnourished children can be found on small farms, while one billion people are going hungry globally, this must be a wake-up call that there's something very wrong with our farming systems," said Tennyson Williams, Regional Director for West and Central Africa.

"Hunger damages peoples' development and is undermining progress on other Millennium Development Goals, especially child and maternal mortality," said Nixon Otieno, ActionAid's head of policy in Kenya.

At the moment, virtually nothing is being spent on research into crops grown by women, training, credit, early childhood education and access to land, despite food price hikes and shortages likely to worsen as climate change intensifies.

"Despite African Governments making a commitment in 2003 to spend 10 percent of their budget on agriculture, seven years on, only eight African countries have met this commitment," said Tennyson Williams. "And government spending on agriculture remains poorly targeted and hugely inconsistent with the realities of women's role in food production."

"Governments and donors must keep their promises to tackle this unprecedented growth in hunger and get back on track to halving hunger by 2015," he said.

Fertile Ground shows that 2.9 million Ugandans could be lifted out of poverty by 2015 if the country reached a six per cent agricultural growth rate annually[ii].

In Kenya, 1.5 million lives could be improved, if current sums on agriculture doubled from 5 to 10 per cent.[iii]

In stark contrast, Malawi is one of Africa's highest spenders on agriculture and as a result food security is better than at any time in recent history. In 2004, 1.5 million people needed food aid while in 2009, this number had dropped to 150,000 people.

Extension services, agricultural research focused on smallholders, and rural financial services – are the most under-resourced but would help women the most.

Low-cost, ecologically sustainable and climate-resilient methods of increasing productivity are being neglected in favour of conventional intensive approaches that often benefit richer farmers most, and can have high environmental costs.

Farmers themselves say they value the increased stability of yields achieved through sustainable approaches, as much as increased volumes.[iv]

References

[i] World Bank, 'Agriculture and poverty reduction', Agriculture for development policy brief, 2008, p.1

[ii] Samuel Benin et al, 'Agricultural growth and investment options for poverty reduction in Uganda', IFPRI discussion paper 00790, September 2008, pp.38-9

[iii] James Thurlow et al, 'Rural investments to accelerate growth and poverty reduction in Kenya', IFPRI discussion paper 00723, October 2007, p.33

[iv] Pretty, J. et al., "Resource-conserving agriculture increases yields in developing countries," Environment, Science and Technology 40(4): 2006.