Femaleled enterprise and agribusiness development

As Global Manager of SNV’s Enhancing Opportunities for Women’s Enterprises EOWE programme , funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands as part of the Funding Leadersh

Female-led enterprise development could be an active enzyme for delivering sustainable development

However, to effectively address the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) female-led enterprise

development must be proactively led by setting a strategy that generates shared value not just for customers

and shareholders, but for wider society and the environment over the long term As Global Manager of

SNV’s Enhancing Opportunities for Women’s Enterprises (EOWE) programme , funded by the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands as part of the Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW)

framework, I believe that climate change adaptation and mitigation, nutrition, women’s economic

empowerment and gender equality are important cross-cutting issues to be addressed in agribusiness

agendas

While we know that transforming agriculture in vulnerable regions can deliver prosperity in the form of food,

income and jobs, the long-term sustainability of shifting from subsistence to more intensive and commercial

practices faces huge challenges The agricultural sector already accounts for 70 percent of rapidly depleting

freshwater resources, is a leading factor in natural habitat and biodiversity loss, and contributes to a quarter of

total human greenhouse gas emissions

Climate change

Climate change is a global phenomenon, with impacts that are already being experienced

on a human level It is recognized that it is those who are already the most vulnerable

and marginalized who experience the greatest impacts (IPCC, 2014), and are in the

utmost need of adaptation strategies in the face of shifts in weather patterns and

resulting environmental phenomena At the same time, it is the vulnerable and

marginalized who have the least capacity or opportunity to prepare for the impacts

of a changing climate or to participate in negotiations on mitigation As women

constitute the largest percentage of the world’s poorest people, they are most

affected by these changes Children and youth, especially girls, as well as elderly

women, are often the most vulnerable

The need to adapt is becoming increasingly urgent as our climate changes Globally, over 2 billion people depend

on agriculture as a livelihood Decisive action is needed to support 790 million who remain food insecure in

developing countries As SNV we are interested in discovering how transformational gender and climate adaptation

Female-led enterprise and agribusiness development

Enhancing Opportunities for Women’s Enterprises Programme

Blog series

By Raymond Brandes, FLOW Programme Manager at SNV

The need to adapt is becoming increasingly urgent

as our climate changes

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concepts can be mainstreamed across programmes, and if there is collaborative work we can do to develop it further

Malnutrition

Malnutrition affects one in two people globally, including 162 million children under the age of five who are stunted (i.e have low height for age) and two billion people who are deficient in one or more micronutrients The task of securing food and nutrition worldwide is multidisciplinary and access to food, food distribution and food production are equally important and cannot succeed independently If household-level effects of agriculture on nutrition exist, they are most likely the result of one or a combination of the following factors: higher/lower agricultural income, market imperfections (resulting in greater consumption of own production) and gender-related factors Household agricultural production has direct and important linkages with household dietary patterns and the nutrition of individual members The magnitude of impacts of these different factors on food security and nutrition may vary

as a result of differences in e.g commodities, contexts, locations or the intensity of people’s participation in programmes

To tackle this food security-sustainability challenge, Sustainable Development Goal 2 (or SDG2, one of 17 holistic SDGs) was established by the UN in 2015 to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” by 2030 SDG2 comes on the back of some good progress, particularly for low-income smallholder farmers For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, regional programmes, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), support governments to invest at least 10% of annual public expenditures on agriculture (although recent SDG2 updates show more work is needed here), with the region seeing cereal production and yields increase by 71% and 49% respectively since 2000

Women’s economic empowerment and gender equality

Women have a critical role to play in all of the SDGs, with many targets specifically recognizing women’s empowerment and gender equality as both the objective and part of the solution SDG5 is known as the stand-alone gender goal because it is dedicated to achieving related goals

Gender equality is well recognized as a development concern and is believed to be prerequisite to poverty reduction, ensuring food security and sustainable development Gender mainstreaming involves making women’s and men’s concerns an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes

Gender mainstreamingrecognises that equality of women can be achieved by identifying and addressing practical and strategic needs of women, men and youth Promoting a gender perspective in development allows that women and men get equal access to and control over resources, development benefits and decision making Failure to recognise and integrate differential needs of women and men in policy and programme design and implementation leads to formulation of gender blind policies and projects This in turn results in inequitable and ineffective delivery

of services, uneven distribution of resources and low participation and unsustainable development Hence promoting gender mainstreaming as a strategy to advance gender equality is imperative

The intervention strategy of SNV’s EOWE programme builds on the Balancing Benefits framework which is

developed by SNV as a gender-transformative, integrated fourfold approach which stimulates household and community dialogue to challenge gender norms that shape resource allocation patterns Men are engaged in the dialogues too, and role models and community influencers are identified to act as change agents SNV’s objective is to grow women's enterprise's viability and profitability and encourage more women to start agribusinesses, while supporting the improvement of markets and governance in favour of equitable opportunities for women

In order to set up abilities to effectively mainstream a cross-cutting issue like gender, it is key that the right

enabling environment is established In particular, one of the key starting points is ensuring the policies and

procedures of a programme, project and-or organisation are structured in such a way that they incorporate

cross-cutting issues Mainstreaming of cross-cross-cutting themes should be reciprocal: cross-cross-cutting dimensions will be

incorporated into capacity development actions and measurement of impact and appropriate capacity development

tools and methods will be developed and used 1

The role of agribusiness

Clearly, to achieve sustainable production and effective markets, global agribusiness plays a vital role Without the

inputs, technologies and investments that it provides, achieving SDG2 (and its related SDGs) is practically

impossible While many individual food businesses have established sustainability programmes, collective actions

and subject matter on the combined role of global agribusiness and sustainable development is limited, and the

sector faces continued pressure around issues such as non-food crops, labour standards, environmental

performance and land use

Alongside SNV’s global strategic partnerships and value chain innovations, shared value

is achieved by establishing environmentally sustainable initiatives to address needs like water, carbon emissions and biodiversity, and fair, socially inclusive policies for employees and the wider supply chain In so doing, it enables the sector to collectively tackle SDG2 in parallel to its inter-linked goals for equality (SDG5, SDG10), sustainable consumption and production (SDG12) and climate action (SDG13)

Many countries use agriculture as a direct means to improve food security and nutrition of agricultural households implicitly assuming that these household-level effects exist and that their magnitude is economically meaningful Correspondingly, policies that promote commercialisation of agriculture, or generally seek to expand the value of agricultural production, assume that enhanced income generation is sufficient to improve food security

and nutrition and that composition of household production does not matter However, the first challenge in

empirically establishing a farm-level relationship between agriculture and nutrition is identifying the right set of

variables to analyse If a direct link between production and consumption is anticipated, that is, farm households

are expected to consume their own production, then the production of certain products or even the diversity of

production are hypothesised to influence nutrition outcomes In that case, the production of particular products or

sets of products, or a production diversity index might be appropriate agriculture measures

Alternatively, if the expectation is that higher income leads to improved nutrition, measures such as the value of

production or agricultural income might be the most relevant However, even the use of an income measure is

complicated by the possibility that the income source (mental accounting) and the recipient (intra-household

allocation) may influence income use suggesting a need to carefully consider how agricultural income is

disaggregated As such, a range of agriculture measures might be used

Addressing inequalities

Achieving sustainable development is impossible without addressing inequalities which hinder people from

accessing opportunities and utilising their potential to change their own situation Gender based inequalities deepen

the disadvantages of people, reinforcing their poverty

Economic and Social Council for 1997.

Mainstreaming gender is the process of assessing the implications of any planned action on women and men

including legislation, policies or programmes, in any area and at all levels It is a strategy for making the

concerns and experiences of women as well as of men an integral part of the design, implementation,

monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in political, economic and societal spheres, so that

women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated The ultimate goal of mainstreaming is to

achieve gender equality 1

To achieve

sustainable production

and effective markets,

global agribusiness

plays a vital role

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SNV’s EOWE programme works with its partners to enable female farmers/entrepreneurs (and their families) to enhance their productivity and income to improve their living condition The majority of men, women and children

in low income countries suffering from food insecurity are farmers on small plots of land, often under one hectare, and/or livestock pastoralists If business is to make a difference in their lives, it must actively engage these groups

by providing them with opportunities to move from simple subsistence to producing a marketable surplus while still investing in their own land, or by supporting the creation of higher value products from their produce As women represent a significant portion of smallholder farmers and constitute the more disadvantaged group of the community they are a key target of any engagement

Private sector actors can achieve this through out-grower schemes that provide nearby smallholders with the inputs, finance and technologies/techniques required for successful production To the same ends, contracts with farmer cooperatives can also enable private sector actors further up the value chain to support smallholders

Gender as a critical dimension of climate-smart agriculture

The existence of social inequalities within rural areas globally due to natural differences (i.e sex) and socio-economic reasons (i.e gender and socio-economic status) shape access to opportunities and benefits from services and resources The disadvantaged position of women in married and female headed households has a drawback on achieving increased production and productivity

Furthermore, agricultural growth is one solution to tackling issues such as food and nutrition insecurity and poverty that climate change exacerbates We simply are not going to see the transformative

changes in agriculture and food systems that we need to see without also tackling

gender issues

With more variable rainfall and higher temperatures, most farmers will have to

shift what they produce, and how they produce it This includes putting more

time, money and effort into soil and water management practices, planting

trees, growing legumes, adopting stress tolerant varieties, shifting from maize

to sorghum, or from cattle to goats, to name just a few examples of key

climate-smart opportunities for smallholders in many regions of the world New research

is showing just how grossly neglected and under-served smallholders, especially

women farmers, within food systems in lower-income countries have been Women

don’t receive the agricultural and climate information they need, and have much less

access to inputs, credit and services than men These women not only produce food, but they also prepare it and are responsible for the nutrition of the family So, there is definitely something wrong with this picture and a significant opportunity to address this glaring gap

Women members of a producer group waiting to sell their produce to brokers in Kenya

We are not going to see the transformative

changes in agriculture

& food systems without also tackling gender

issues

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At the farm-level, climate-smart agriculture is something farmers are already doing, but with varying degrees of success Most recognise and are trying to cope with their changing climates These climate-smart practices include tasks such as planting fruit, fodder and fuel trees on farms These can save much time and effort for those women who go out to collect fodder and fuel wood, for example They also can include soil conservation efforts like SRI (System of Rice Intensification)

that SNV and our EOWE programme advocate for and apply in Vietnam, which in many circumstances may greatly decrease women’s time spent on weeding and other (rice) farming tasks Thus, we need to understand the costs and benefits of these practices, not just for households, but also for individuals and the environments in which they live Turning these challenges into opportunities however, is easier said than done How can we best tap into the potential of women farmers? How can we keep young people in farming and create good jobs for them elsewhere

in the food system?

Domestic and multi-national agribusiness can support the SDGs by taking collective action through regional and global governance structures that provide leadership, advocacy, insights (and where needed funding) Efforts set

up by the Dutch government , Wageningen University & Research and the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN), a (UN) country-led movement advancing health and development through improved nutrition, show good promise While having appropriate representation from global agribusiness will be a key success factor, so will effective partnerships with wider stakeholders

Regional agricultural growth clusters/corridors can help generate foreign exchange for investment into technology upgrades and other purchases Many developing countries are focused not just on domestic production of staple crops, but also on the value-added processing and trading of exportable cash crops This has been successfully achieved through the development of agricultural growth corridors and clusters, where investments into the necessary technologies, infrastructure and enterprises can enable economies of scale By targeting suitable existing agro-ecologies, many countries have set strong plans for the increased production of one or two key crops within one area, supported by enhanced aggregation, markets and agro-processing

As long as they are planned carefully and supported by safeguards to secure local food security, prices and land rights (as well as integrating environmentally sustainable, socially inclusive initiatives), these programmes are an important part of the productivity and sustainable development picture They typically have buy-in at the highest levels of government, and offer agribusiness excellent opportunities for first mover advantages in areas where greater certainty can be given to new investments and their value chains In sectors such as livestock, cereals and horticultural crops in developing countries, agribusiness should seek out the implementers of national and regional agricultural growth corridor programmes for a more focused approach to expansion

Female rice farmers using the SRI technique in Vietnam