FAO has launched the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026, a global campaign to recognise women’s essential contributions to agrifood systems and accelerate action to close persistent gender gaps. Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly, the initiative will drive policy reform, investment and partnerships throughout 2026. FAO, IFAD and WFP will coordinate activities to advance gender equality and strengthen resilient food systems worldwide.
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026, in late December a global campaign designed to recognize women’s indispensable — yet often overlooked — contributions to agrifood systems and to accelerate efforts to close longstanding gender gaps.
Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2024, the Year seeks to highlight the realities faced by women farmers while driving policy reform and investment to advance gender equality, strengthen women’s empowerment, and build more resilient agrifood systems. FAO, in collaboration with the Rome-based UN agencies — the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) — will coordinate activities throughout 2026.
Women represent a major share of the global agricultural workforce and play essential roles across agrifood value chains — from production and processing to distribution and trade — while also underpinning household food security and nutrition. In 2021, agrifood systems employed 40% of working women worldwide, a figure nearly equal to that of men.
Yet women’s work remains undervalued, and their employment is often more precarious — characterized by irregular, informal, part-time, low-paid, and labour-intensive conditions, leaving them highly vulnerable, according to a FAO press release. They also face persistent structural barriers, including limited access to land, finance, technology, education, extension services, and meaningful participation in decision-making at all levels.
The Year was officially launched during a ceremony held on the sidelines of the 179th Session of the FAO Council. In his opening remarks, FAO Chief Economist Máximo Torero cautioned that progress on women’s empowerment in agrifood systems has stagnated over the past decade.
“The cost of inaction is enormous. We know from recent estimates that closing the gaps between men and women in agriculture could raise global GDP by one trillion dollars and reduce food insecurity for 45 million people,” he said.
He stressed that the observance goes far beyond celebration, calling for “bringing policy attention to the multidimensional challenges they (women farmers) face, and promoting legal reforms and policy and programmatic action that allow women to have equal land rights, equal access to finance, to technology, to extension services, to markets, and to decision-making.”
The event was co-organized by Jordan and Ireland, represented respectively by FAO Regional Goodwill Ambassador for the Near East and North Africa Princess Basma bint Ali and Maria Dunne, Assistant Secretary-General at Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
In closing, FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol underscored that advancing the needs and rights of women farmers must remain a priority long after 2026.
“Throughout 2026, the International Year will move from today’s sharing of personal stories and discussions to practical work — national policies, community partnerships, research, investment, and dialogue between farmers, cooperatives, governments, finance institutions, youth networks, and universities. The goal is simple: turn commitment into practice, and practice into measurable impact,” she said.
FAO: Who is a Woman Farmer?
Women farmers work in diverse roles across agrifood systems and come from all backgrounds: young and older women, Indigenous women, women in local communities, women with disabilities, and refugee and displaced women. They are smallholder producers, peasants, agricultural laborers, fishers and fish workers, beekeepers, pastoralists, processors, traders, women in agricultural sciences, rural entrepreneurs, traditional knowledge holders, and more—whether in formal or informal work, with or without land ownership.
Recent FAO reports — The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems and The Unjust Climate — underscore the scale of gender inequality and the disproportionate climate risks faced by women. Together, the reports highlight the structural barriers limiting women’s productivity, income, access to resources, and resilience.
Key findings include:
- Women farmers typically work on smaller plots of land than men. Even when they manage farms of the same size, the gender gap in land productivity is 24 percent.
- Each day of extreme high temperatures reduces the total value of crops produced by women farmers by three percent relative to men.
- A 1° C increase in long-term average temperatures is associated with a 34 percent reduction in the total incomes of female-headed households, relative to those of male-headed households.
- Women engaged in wage employment in agrifood systems earn 78 cents for every dollar that men earn.
- The unpaid care work performed by women and girls contributes at least $ 10.8 trillion to the global economy annually.
- Reducing gender disparities in employment, education, and income could eliminate 52 percent of the food insecurity gap which is consistently higher among women.
- Empowering rural women through targeted development interventions could raise incomes for 58 million more people and boost resilience for 235 million.
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