Empowering Smallholder Women Farmers Through Agricultural Research

By Martins Eke

In Nigeria, smallholder women farmers are the backbone of the country’s food system, yet they face disproportionate challenges, including limited access to land, credit, modern technology, and agricultural research. While Nigeria has a national gender policy in agriculture, bridging the gap between policy and practice requires concerted and coordinated effort from all branches of government. The executive and legislative arms of government, through their distinct yet complementary functions, can be instrumental in leveraging agricultural research to address the specific needs of smallholder women farmers. By designing inclusive policies, allocating targeted funds, and ensuring accountability, both branches can foster an agricultural sector where women are not just participants, but leaders and innovators.

The executive arm, comprising the President and various ministries, is responsible for setting policy priorities and implementing programs. Its role in supporting smallholder women farmers through agricultural research is primarily focused on execution and resource allocation.The executive can mandate and enforce gender-responsive budgeting across all agricultural spending. This moves beyond general agricultural funding to explicitly allocate resources for programs that address the unique constraints women face. For instance, in previous years, the Smallholder Women Farmers Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON) and allies have secured critical budgetary changes, including allocations for seeds, fertilizer, and light modern equipment tailored to women’s needs.

This practice must be institutionalized at the federal and state levels. The executive can design and implement specific programs that translate gender-sensitive research into practical support for women farmers. Recent initiatives like the Women Agro Value Chain Expansion Programme (WAVE) are a promising step in this direction. These programs, often a direct result of executive action, can provide access to grants, financial literacy training, and technology adoption based on research findings that account for women’s roles and responsibilities. The executive can enhance the capacity of the agricultural extension system to effectively disseminate research findings to smallholder women farmers. This involves increasing the number of female extension workers, who are better positioned to build trust and communicate with women in a culturally sensitive manner. The executive can also fund programs that use participatory methods, like Farmer Field Schools, ensuring that research is not just delivered, but co-created with female farmers.The executive can direct research institutes to prioritize generating sex-disaggregated data on agricultural assets, labor, and productivity. This evidence is crucial for effective policy formulation and implementation, ensuring that government interventions are based on accurate information rather than assumptions. The Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) already emphasizes this in its gender policy and strategy.

The legislative arm, consisting of the Senate, House of Representatives, and Houses of Assembly is vital for creating the enabling legal and financial environment for women farmers. Their support is critical for turning executive vision into sustainable reality. Lawmakers can champion bills that address systemic inequalities faced by women farmers. For example, legislation to reform customary land tenure systems, which often prevent women from owning land, is crucial. The legislature can also pass laws that require government agencies and research institutions to adhere to specific gender-inclusive standards. This provides a legal basis for holding the executive accountable. While the executive proposes the budget, the legislature approves it. Lawmakers can use their appropriation powers to ensure that agricultural budgets are sufficiently funded and earmarked for gender-responsive research and extension services.

By scrutinizing budget proposals, they can identify and rectify gender-blind funding gaps, as demonstrated by the increase in agricultural spending secured by advocacy groups. Through its committees on agriculture and women’s affairs, the legislature can exercise rigorous oversight of executive agencies and research institutions. This involves holding public hearings, demanding progress reports, and ensuring that gender-related targets are met. The legislature can push for robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks that track the impact of agricultural research on women farmers, thereby ensuring transparency and effectiveness.Lawmakers serve as direct links to their constituencies, including smallholder women farmers. They can use their platform to amplify the voices and concerns of these farmers, ensuring that legislative agendas reflect their realities. By convening stakeholder consultations, legislators can bring the needs of rural women to the national policymaking stage.

True progress in empowering smallholder women farmers through agricultural research requires a synergistic relationship between the executive and legislative arms. The executive’s commitment to implementation must be backed by the legislature’s provision of adequate legal and financial frameworks. Executive-led initiatives should be informed by gender-responsive research funded through legislative appropriations. The legislature’s oversight role can ensure that these executive programs genuinely reach women farmers and are based on robust, gender-sensitive research. By working together, these two arms of government can move beyond symbolic gestures to create a genuinely inclusive and productive agricultural sector, leveraging research to sow the seeds of change and harvest a future of food security and gender equality.

•Eke writes from the Centre for Social Justice, Abuja