Closing gaps between men and women in agribusiness
In the coming years, the agribusiness sector will navigate a rapidly shifting, increasingly challenging time. One of the challenges will be to meet the rising demand for agricultural products, even as the land suitable for growing crops declines. Navigating the changes will mean seizing new ways of increasing the productivity and efficiency of agribusiness value chains—the goods and services required to bring agricultural products from farms to retail. One solution to the challenges is to improve women’s access to assets, enabling them to fully participate in all aspects of agribusiness.
Investing in Women along Agribusiness Value Chains call on the private sector to invest in closing gaps between men and women in agribusiness. It focuses on four different stages of a simplified value chain:
1. Input provision (provision of seeds and fertilizers, for example)
2. Production
3. Post-harvest processing and storage
4. Transportation, sales, and marketing
For each stage in the value chain, the report helps companies identify potential benefits from closing gender gaps. The authors accomplished this by reviewing women’s contributions and constraints within each stage, outlining solutions for the private sector, demonstrating the business rationale for making gender-smart investments, and presenting best-practice case studies.
Case study: Strengthening Women Farmers in DCM Shiram’s Sugarcane Value Chain (2019)
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