Agriculture on Women's Development in Developing Countries

Agriculture on Women's Development in 

Developing Countries

Introduction:
Agriculture is one of Bangladesh's most important economic drivers. This sector is vital to improving food security, as well as self-sufficiency in agricultural output, rural economic development, and long-term socioeconomic development. The female contribution to the overall economy, particularly in agriculture is high throughout Asia. Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Vietnam have a particularly high percentage of women employed in the agricultural sector, with estimates ranging between 60 to 98 percent (FAO, 2003). Among the neighboring countries, only 59 percent of Bangladeshi women, as compared to 74 percent of Indian, 64 percent Pakistani, and 85 percent Nepali women, are employed in agriculture. Indeed, in most Asian countries the number of women employed in agriculture as a percentage of the economically active population is higher than that of men. However, Women's contribution to agriculture, which is considered unpaid family labor, is grossly underestimated. In fact, if unpaid work were included, the figures for female employment in agriculture would be even higher (FAO, 2003).

In all developing nations, women play a crucial role in agricultural and rural economies. In many places of the world where economic and social forces are affecting the agriculture sector, its functions vary greatly between and within regions and are changing quickly. Rural women frequently manage complicated households and pursue several sustainable livelihoods. Producing agricultural crops, caring for animals, processing and preparing food, and working in agriculture are typical tasks they engage in.

Women in Agriculture:
Women are essential to farming and increasing the standard of living in rural areas. However, because of some social obstacles and gender bias, their contributions are frequently overlooked. Women in agriculture are frequently neglected by government initiatives as well. This undercuts the potential advantages of programs, particularly those that raise household income, increase food production, improve nutrition, promote literacy, reduce poverty, and manage population growth. Equitable access to educational resources for rural women will undoubtedly boost their performance and free them from their marginalized situation in society. Agricultural extension, the development of farming methods, land reforms, and rural welfare are further fields where women's potential can be effectively utilized. When women's potential has been actively utilized, there have been notable advancements in areas like the distribution of household water supplies and institutional finance.

 

ROLE OF WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE:
Women as Farmers:
Agricultural statistics reflect that it has 144,685 farmers utilizing 259,358 hectares of land. It also indicates that 43,808 (30%) are women between the age of 35-54. The average land space utilized by women is 1.4 hectares in comparison to an average of 2.6 hectares of land cultivated by male farmers (ABIS, n.d.).

Women as Agricultural Labourers:
More women than men work as laborers on large farms operated by others, helping with labor-intensive tasks in greenhouses, performing task work, applying fertilizer, reaping and packaging crops, etc. These women are not included in the data gathered, primarily because they lack access to land. These women typically serve as home heads, primary guardians, or homemakers for their families.

Women in Backyard Gardening:
Under the "Eat what you Grow, Grow what you Eat" campaign, rural women have done it successfully with backyard gardening. The idea of providing food for relatives and friends was intended to be encouraged. With a household-level reproduction of the program in urban areas, the campaign has restored pride in our women.

Women in Agro-Processing:
The integration of food preparation skills to transform raw indigenous food into a value-added meal has recently been introduced to increase food consumption, notwithstanding the crucial role that women play in agriculture. The traditional belief that a woman belongs in the kitchen supports this.

Women's contribution to agricultural production:
Women play a significant role in the agricultural labor force and in agricultural activities, although to a varying degree. Consequently, their contribution to agricultural output is undoubtedly extremely significant, although difficult to quantify with
any accuracy. It has often been claimed that women produce 60-80 percent of the food. However, assigning contributions to agricultural outputs by gender is problematic because in most agricultural households both men and women are involved in crop production. It can be attempted to allocate output by gender by assuming that specific crops are grown by women and others by men and then aggregating the value of women’s and men’s crops to determine the share grown by women. Researchers have occasionally used this approach, especially in West Africa, where there are distinguishable cropping patterns by gender (Hoddinott & Haddad, 1995; Duflo & Udry, 2004). Yet, a careful analysis of agriculture in Ghana finds that while there are gendered patterns of cropping, the distinctions between men’s and women’s crops do not hold up well enough to use them to make inferences about men’s and women’s relative contribution to production. In addition, gendered patterns of cropping may change over time (Doss, 2002).

Women's contribution to food production:
In most cases, it is impossible to give an accurate answer to the question of how much women contribute to agriculture and food production. Food production by women and men typically coexists. The majority of food is generated via the efforts of both men and women working together. Making random assumptions about gender roles in the production process is necessary to quantify the proportion of food produced by women. These assumptions are unlikely to hold in all situations. For instance, men and women may both be involved in harvesting if men traditionally do the clearing work while women plant and weed the crops. It becomes impossible to differentiate output by gender in these and other similar situations.

Women as livestock keepers:
Within pastoralist and mixed farming systems, livestock plays an important role in supporting women and in improving their financial situation, and women are heavily engaged in the sector. An estimated two-thirds of poor livestock keepers, totaling approximately 400 million people, are women (Thornton, et al., 2002). They are equally responsible for nurturing together with men and kids, and some species and activities are more often associated with women than men. Women frequently have a significant part in managing dairy and poultry animals, as well as other animals that are kept and fed on a homestead. If women's movement is restricted, men are more likely to be involved in building housing, herding grazing animals, and marketing products when responsibilities are separated. The use of eggs, milk, and chicken meat for domestic use is strongly influenced by women, and they frequently have authority over the marketing and sales of these items. This may be why investments in poultry and small-scale dairy enterprises have been popular for development initiatives meant to enhance the condition of rural women. Women also control small-scale pig production in various nations. Female-headed households are as successful as male-headed households in generating income from their animals, although they tend to own smaller numbers of animals, probably because of labor constraints. Ownership of livestock is particularly attractive to women in societies where access to land is restricted to men (Bravo-Baumann, 2000).

Women in fisheries and aquaculture:
In 2018, nearly 59.5 million people worldwide were directly engaged, full-time or part-time, in the fishery primary sector (FAO fishery database). Instead, when considering both the primary and secondary fisheries and aquaculture sectors, many authors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) report that one out of two workers is a woman.

Reflecting its high number of workers in the fisheries and aquaculture sector, Asia continues to have the largest fleet with 3.1 million vessels accounting for 68 percent of the global total.

Women have rarely engaged in commercial offshore and long-distance capture fisheries
because of the vigorous work involved and women’s domestic responsibilities and/or social norms. Women are more commonly occupied in subsistence and commercial fishing from small boats and canoes in coastal or inland waters. Women also contribute as entrepreneurs and provide labor before, during, and after the catch in both artisanal and commercial fisheries. For example, in West Africa, the so-called “Fish Mamas” play a major role. They usually own capital and are directly and vigorously involved in the coordination of the fisheries chain, from production to sale of fish.

Studies of women in aquaculture, especially in Asia where aquaculture has a long tradition, indicate that the contribution of women in labor is often greater than men’s,
although macro-level sex-disaggregated data on this topic is almost non-existent. Women are reported to constitute 33 percent of the rural aquaculture workforce in China, 42
percent in Indonesia and 80 percent in Vietnam (Kusakabe & Kelkar, 2001).

The material in this section was prepared by FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Division.

Women in forestry:
Both the formal and informal forestry industries benefit greatly from the contributions of women. They participate in agroforestry, watershed management, tree maintenance, and the preservation and protection of forests. For women, particularly in rural regions, forests are frequently a significant source of work. Women make up a substantial section of the workforce in the forest sector around the world, working in everything from nurseries to plantations, logging to wood processing. Although women make significant contributions to the forestry industry, their work is not completely acknowledged or documented, they do not earn the same as males, and their working conditions are frequently substandard.

Challenges to Women's Contribution to Agricultural Development in Developing Countries
The following barriers prevent women from contributing as much as they could to agricultural growth in developing countries, despite the important role they play in this process (Srivastava & Srivastava, 2017).

1. Women have unequal land rights. They hardly enjoy land ownership rights directly in their names. Limited rights or access to arable land further limits livelihood options and exacerbates the financial strain on women, especially in women-headed households.
2. Women have limited access to the use of productive resources.
3. Women perform all un-mechanized agricultural tasks and perform multiple tasks which add more burden to them due to lack of equipment and appropriate technology.
4. Women have little control over the decision-making process, either inside home or outside the home. Without access to capital or household decision-making abilities, women lack the resources that are for their labor stability and the stability of their household.
5. Few women holding of agricultural productive resources such as land, animals, and machinery.
6. Poor women farmers are less able to purchase technology to adapt to climate change due to a lack of access to credit and agricultural services. They often have low productivity due to an inability to invest in things such as improved seeds and soil replenishment.
7. Women farmers in the agricultural sector suffer from a high illiteracy rate among them. They do not know their legal rights.
8. Women earn fewer wages, especially in joint, informal, and private sectors.
9. Miss applying some laws and regulations in favor of women such as heritage legislation.
10. Lack of market intelligence and inadequate information put women farmers in unfavorable situations with weak bargaining power with the buyers.

Suggestions:
Following are the key points, which will help in creating a respectable role for women in Indian agriculture (Srivastava & Srivastava, 2017).
1. Skill empowerment By training in the area of various operations
· Agricultural Field operations
· Conservation of biodiversity
· Nutritional bio-security
· Vocational training
· Organic farming
2. Technology development for women
· Designing tools for various field operations
· Animal husbandry for example Artificial insemination (AI) and Veterinary knowledge
· For side income for example Mushroom cultivation and Floriculture
3. Creation of self-help groups (SHGs)
· For financial support
· For the generation of employment
4. Projection of contribution of women by collecting and analyzing data
· Collection and display of data
· Projection of successful women in agriculture
· Representation of their contribution in economic terms
5. Providing Financial Powers Giving representation in land holdings

The role of women in sustainable agriculture:
Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are universal goals aimed at making the
global world a better and safe environment. More so, it is an all-embracing goal that requires all hands to be on deck (Benson, et al., 2018). The SDGs had seventeen goals with specific targets that were concentrated in various fields. However, in the context, emphasis is placed on goal number 2, which is related to agriculture. This objective was to reduce hunger and increase food security.

Women all across the world have found a role in small-scale "sustainable" agriculture, despite several obstacles. To buy costly inputs like seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides—not to mention the machinery, computers, and drones—modern traditional farming demands a significant upfront cash commitment. Since it requires less capital, sustainable or community farming is by definition a smaller-scale business that lowers the barriers for women and other minority farmers. Sustainable farming may also make it possible to farm in areas that aren't entirely rural, such as urban and suburban areas, giving women a chance to earn money on their own. In fact, research indicates a connection between growth in women's engagement in farming and the current surge in local, sustainable agriculture and specialty products.

However, the growing participation of women in sustainable farming is not without resistance. Evidence suggests that society undervalues the work done by women, which has the effect of lowering wages in all occupations as the percentage of women employees rises. As more women enter this industry, farms with "sustainable," "alternative," or "organic" labels may face a reduction in their yearly income.

Conclusion:
For the majority of developing nations, agriculture is a key driver of economic growth. Its development is essential for the country's overall economic development by boosting income and food security. Rural women are more economically engaged in agriculture than other rural groups, and they significantly contribute to the nation's livestock and agricultural development. Women's contributions to the industry are significant, but they are underappreciated and unacknowledged. Because women play significant roles in agricultural production, in addition to domestic duties and volunteer labor, special emphasis must be paid to their tasks. In addition to keeping women trapped in a cycle of poor productivity, the persistent gender imbalance in access to and control of resources raises concerns about the sector's inclusive and sustainable growth. A major concern, especially in light of socioeconomic and environmental developments, is how to close the gender gap and empower women with new knowledge and technology.

 

 

References

ABIS, n.d. Rural Agricultural Development Agency, Jamaica: Agri-Business Information System (ABIS).

Benson, O. V., Anyalebechi, L. I. & Amaechi, N. M., 2018. Sustainable development goals (SDGs) in developing countries: The expectations of the community and public libraries. Nigerian and RSA Library Journals, 14(1\&2), pp. 65-78.

Bravo-Baumann, H., 2000. Gender and Livestock. Capitalization of Experiences on Livestock Projects and Gender. Working document. Swiss Development Cooperation.

Doss, C. R., 2002. Men’s crops? Women’s crops? The gender patterns of cropping in Ghana. World Development, 30(11), pp. 1987-2000.

Duflo, E. & Udry, C. R., 2004. Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Cote d’Ivoire: Social norms, separate accounts, and consumption choices. s.l., National Bureau of Economic Research Cambridge, Mass., USA.

FAO, 2003. Gender, Key to Sustainability and Food Security. Plan of Action: Gender and Development, FAO.

FAO, 2003. Rural Women: Key to Food Security. Gender and Population Division. FAO, Rome.

Hoddinott, J. & Haddad, L., 1995. Does female income share influence household expenditure patterns? Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 57(1), pp. 77-96.

Kusakabe, K. & Kelkar, G., 2001. Gender Concerns in Aquaculture in Southeast Asia.

Srivastava, S. P. & Srivastava , S. P., 2017. Role of Women in Indian Agriculture- Issues and Challenges. Journal of Agroecology and Natural Resource Management, 4(1), pp. 37-43.

Thornton, P. et al., 2002. Mapping poverty and livestock in the developing world, ILRI, Nairobi, Kenya.