Women make up 43% of the global agricultural labour force, but they face discrimination when it comes to land ownership, access to finance and credit, and participation in decision-making activities, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
In South Africa, women own only 13% of farms and agricultural land, which limits their vast potential.
Boosting women farmers is vital for the country with food insecurity rife. An estimated 30 million South Africans were food insecure in 2022, according to FoodForward, while 27% of all children under 5 were affected by stunting in 2023. This is a humanitarian crisis requiring a holistic response – but one important remedy is to address women’s vulnerability in the agricultural sector, enabling them to find stable permanent employment or sustain smallholder farms.
In June 2024, Trialogue and Standard Bank South Africa presented a webinar exploring how to empower women farmers.
Panellists Niki Neumann-Forder (Head of Agribusiness Platforms and Innovation at Standard Bank), Grant Jacobs (co-founder and CEO of HelloChoice), Leigh Hildyard (Food Systems and Smallholder Market Access at the World Food Program) and Leeko Makoene (founder and CEO of Made with Rural), discussed some of the challenges faced by these smallholder farmers, along with possible solutions.
The panel discussion was moderated by Trialogue’s thought leadership manager, Sheldon Morais.
Defining the problem
The webinar was prefaced by an introduction by Dr Kirston Greenop, head of corporate citizenship at Standard Bank, who said the bank’s approach is holistic and partnership-driven.
Greenop explained that the bank is focused on three key areas:
- How to make systemic change, rather than focus on one or specific problems;
- how to disrupt the status quo by “being brave and thinking big”; and
- how to partner with a variety of stakeholders to increase impact.
“How do you address a social problem in such a way that you can change the system, not just one person’s life?” Greenop asked.
Standard Bank’s approach is to examine where the system is “breaking down” and work with partners to resolve the issue.
CSI support for food security and agriculture
Many large companies in South Africa support food security and agriculture – in 2023, 60% of companies surveyed by Trialogue indicated that they provide this support through corporate social investment (CSI), with an average of 9% of total CSI spend devoted to this.
Of this spend, 50% goes to food relief and feeding schemes. However, only 8% goes towards a more sustainable solution, namely support for small-scale farmers and commercial agriculture.
Companies are in a unique position to address some of the systemic challenges in the agricultural value chain, said Niki Neumann-Forder.
This includes driving access to financial and information services and digital technologies, as well as investing in innovation, for example on-farm precision agriculture, which will improve farmers’ efficiency.
Access to information and a successful growing cycle ensure a farmer’s sustainability, and digital or mobile apps can provide them with access to finance, market pricing weather information, and the skills they need to manage their small businesses, Neumann-Forder said. Companies can also help farmers by investing in renewable energy and biotechnology.
“We know we can’t solve these systemic challenges alone, and we’re looking at collaboration and partnerships with other large corporates, not only from a CSI perspective, but also at a solution level along the value chain,” Neumann-Forder explained.
A prime example of this is Standard Bank’s partnership with HelloChoice, an online agricultural marketplace. Standard Bank powers OneFarm Share, a platform that accelerates smallholder farmer development, and helps to reduce food waste by connecting NPOs to available fresh produce from local farmers and markets.
Grant Jacobs said the platform focuses on multiple solutions in the sector, including alleviating hunger, reducing food waste, promoting market access for smallholder farmers and helping them to commercialise their businesses.
The platform procures food from emerging farmers and directs it to 2 700 charities, through food distribution partnerships with FoodForward, Gift of the Givers, and SA Harvest .
“Over the past four years, we have distributed 24 000 tons of food and created 90 million meals for about 1.2 million people,” Jacobs said.
As a “friendly offtaker”, the platform helps smallholder farmers along the path to commercialisation, making it possible for them to improve quality and pricing so their businesses can become more sustainable. “We leverage procurement spend, technology and partnerships to drive the development and commercialisation of smallholder farms,” Jacobs said.
Perhaps more importantly, the platform has injected R23 million into women-owned farming businesses nationally.
Another key requirement for women farmers is access to finance, said Leigh Hildyard, who pointed out that women are often less able to obtain the funds they need. “Some can’t even open bank accounts without their husband’s approval,” she noted.
The World Food Program addresses this issue along with other capacity constraints that prevent women farmers from entering the agricultural value chain and accessing markets.
“If you grow a great crop but you can’t sell at the right price at the right time, you can’t move from being a subsistence farmer to an entrepreneur,” Jacobs pointed out. Technology is one of the key enablers of a more efficient value chain, helping a fragmented sector with end-to-end solutions.
The World Food Program has partnered with UN Women to try to address the lack of digital and financial literacy in South Africa and elsewhere. “Education is a key driver in determining how women access markets,” Hildyard noted. The organisation also promotes climate resilience on the continent.
Solving problems for women farmers
Growing up with subsistence farmers taught Leeko Makoene about the challenge of market access, which led to her founding Made with Rural, an aggregator platform that links smallholder farmers in rural and township areas to different stakeholders in the agricultural sector.
“I came up with a demand-driven model that means farmers don’t have to plant seeds, water, harvest and cross their fingers in the hope someone will buy their produce,” she said. “Now, we go into the market and see what offtake agreements we can get, which will inform how the farmers’ planting journeys will unfold.”
She says solving the challenge of market access eases many of the other challenges farmers face.
Although government or private-sector programmes don’t often fund aggregators, as they prefer to fund farmers directly, supporting an aggregator or hub in a particular village is vital as it allows farmers to access technology and resources they would not otherwise have.
“I have seen small village projects that have collapsed because farmers were given once-off support, without anyone to assist on the ground every day, but hubs or aggregators are cheap and help farmers’ businesses to remain sustainable,” she explained.
She added that supporting women farmers makes a difference as women are usually considered to be general workers who “belong in the fields” but empowering them to grow and perhaps reach the next level of their careers will strengthen the sector.
Working with OneFarm has allowed Makoene to work with alternative markets, not just retailers. “We’ve worked with hawkers and sent produce to street vendors in bulk,” she says, adding that she has learnt how to palletise and transport goods. “OneFarm also ensures a quick turnaround time for payments – usually less than 24 hours. This has helped us a lot, since cash is king.
Neumann-Forder made the important point that, to bring about systemic change, we need to take a longer-term view and shift from a development or donor mindset to a commercialised mindset. Women farmers must be businesspeople, who are able to go beyond growing exceptional produce.
“Large corporates must view the disbursement of CSI funds as an investment,” she concluded. “Funds may be development-focused, but they must have financial and commercial upsides for their beneficiaries.”
Find out more
Explore the Food security and agriculture topic on the Trialogue Knowledge Hub.
Find out how supporting sustainable agriculture drives food security by watching Dr Siviwe Malongweni’s keynote address at the Trialogue Business in Society Conference 2024.
Watch a panel discussion on how agri-ecosystem collaboration demonstrates transformative value, which took place at the Trialogue Business in Society Conference 2024.
Read Women in agriculture: an exploratory study on women and gender equality in South African agriculture and The impact of empowering women farmers towards sustainable agriculture in the Gauteng province of South Africa to gain a deeper understanding of how to advance women in agriculture.
