Women’s Farming Gap Costs Nigeria $2.3bn Yearly, FAO Warns
UN agencies demand land, credit, technology, market access for women farmers
Nigeria is losing an estimated $2.3 billion annually — equivalent to about two per cent of its Gross Domestic Product — because women farmers lack equal access to land, finance, technology, agricultural services and markets, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has warned.
The organisation said the loss reflected the economic cost of excluding women from the resources and decisions that determine agricultural productivity, adding that Nigeria could unlock substantial gains in food production, employment and rural prosperity by removing the barriers limiting women’s participation in the sector.
The warning was issued in Abuja on Tuesday at a high-level meeting and panel discussion to mark the 2026 International Year of the Woman Farmer, held at the United Nations House under the theme, “Advancing Women’s Leadership and Economic Power in Nigeria’s Agrifood System.”
The meeting brought together government officials, development partners, members of the diplomatic corps, financial institutions, private-sector operators, farmers’ organisations and women farmers, with the central message that women’s participation in agriculture must be treated as an economic imperative rather than merely a social-welfare concern.
The FAO representative, Hussein Gadain, said women were already active in virtually every segment of Nigeria’s agrifood system, from crop production, livestock and fisheries to food processing, trading, entrepreneurship and household nutrition.
“Women must be recognised not only as contributors to agrifood systems, but also as decision-makers, innovators, investors and leaders,” he said.
According to FAO, women account for approximately 41 per cent of the global agrifood workforce, while women contribute an estimated 37 per cent of labour in Nigeria’s crop production. The organisation said the productivity gap was not a reflection of women’s ability to farm, but largely the result of unequal opportunities.
Women may cultivate crops, rear livestock, process farm produce, transport food and operate small agribusinesses, but their access to land, credit, improved technology and profitable markets often remains limited. The result, FAO said, is that many women are concentrated at the lower-value end of agricultural value chains, while control over productive assets and major commercial decisions remains disproportionately outside their reach.
The organisation warned that leaving the gap unaddressed would continue to impose a significant economic cost on Nigeria, particularly as the country confronts food inflation, unemployment, rural poverty, insecurity and climate-related disruptions to agricultural production.
The warning is significant for an economy in which agriculture contributes approximately 22 to 25 per cent of GDP and engages an estimated 35 to 40 per cent of the labour force. More than 70 per cent of rural households depend on agriculture for all or part of their income and food security, meaning that improving women’s productivity could have consequences far beyond individual farms.
FAO said closing gender gaps in agricultural productivity and wages could add nearly $1 trillion to the global economy and reduce food insecurity for millions of people.
It therefore called for a shift from programmes that merely seek to “include” women to policies that deliberately expand their economic power, ownership and representation in agricultural decision-making.
The organisation said greater access to finance, technology, markets and productive resources would enable more women-led enterprises to grow, create jobs and contribute more significantly to food security.
Gadain said FAO remained committed to working with the Federal Government, state governments, development partners, financial institutions, farmer organisations and civil society to expand women’s economic opportunities through climate-smart agriculture, agribusiness development, financial inclusion, market access and gender-responsive policies.
With FAO establishing the scale of the economic loss and the policy changes required to address it, the World Food Programme (WFP) presented evidence of how targeted investment could help women overcome some of the practical barriers confronting them in farming communities.
The WFP Country Director, Katrien Ghoos, represented by the Deputy Country Director, Edouard Thiam, said 128,000 women had formed a major part of the organisation’s work with farming communities in northern Nigeria over the past five years.
She said WFP interventions had included the provision of seeds, fertiliser and other inputs, access to equipment and storage facilities, irrigation, market linkages and community resilience hubs.
The interventions, she explained, were designed not only to increase harvests but also to enable farmers to remain productive despite conflict, insecurity, climate shocks and rising production costs.
More than 70 per cent of jobs created through WFP activities had gone to young women, she disclosed, adding that increased agricultural production was also generating economic activity for traders, transporters and processors beyond the farm gate.
Ghoos stressed that local procurement was an important part of this process, saying WFP’s purchase of food from Nigerian farmers and businesses helped keep money within the domestic economy, sustain rural markets and create employment.
“Investing in women farmers is not separate from investing in Nigerian agriculture. It is part of the same ambition to generate greater prosperity,” the WFP representative said.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) then presented figures showing how access to finance, training, insurance and organised production could strengthen women’s long-term economic position.
The IFAD Country Director, Mohamed El-Ghazaly, said 96,827 women had been reached through three of its programmes in Nigeria: the Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP), Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises – Niger Delta (LIFE-ND), and Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ).
Under VCDP, 87,888 women are members of supported rural producer organisations, while 36,572 have received training in crop production technologies and 50,613 have accessed advisory services.
LIFE-ND has trained 17,201 women, including those involved in crop production and fisheries, while SAPZ has trained 5,815 women in improved crop production practices.
El-Ghazaly said LIFE-ND had enabled 11,003 women to access savings, 9,568 to obtain credit and 11,382 to access insurance, while 14,654 had received financial literacy training.
More than 20,000 women across the three programmes had also received targeted nutrition support, while nearly 60,000 female household members supported by VCDP had received assistance to cope with climate-change impacts.
The figures, IFAD said, demonstrated that women’s empowerment could not be reduced to a single intervention. Access to land and inputs would have limited impact without finance, markets, insurance, technical knowledge and the capacity to withstand climate and economic shocks.
The three UN agencies therefore urged Nigeria to ensure that women farmers were not treated primarily as beneficiaries of agricultural programmes, but as owners of businesses, cooperative leaders, investment recipients, policy participants and decision-makers within financial and agricultural institutions.
They said the experiences of women farmers from IFAD-supported projects across 17 states should inform the national policy conversation, stressing that agricultural transformation could not be achieved solely through policies formulated in national capitals.
As Nigeria marks the International Year of the Woman Farmer, the challenge is to translate recognition into concrete investments that give women greater productive capacity, income, ownership and leadership.
The UN agencies said the economic argument was clear: empowering women farmers would not only improve household welfare, but also strengthen rural markets, create jobs and move Nigeria closer to food security and sustainable economic development.
