WUNRN
To Combat
Hunger, Give Land Rights to the World's Poor Women
A lack of land rights for
the poor fuels global hunger. With no ownership, land is poorly cultivated, and
families subsist as day laborers or indentured servants. Giving land to the
poor, especially women, allows them to grow food for their families and sell
crops to pay for education.
An Indian woman farmer holds a bunch of paddy saplings as she works in a paddy
field on the outskirts of
(Ajit Solanki/AP)
When world leaders gathered
in London
to join British
Prime Minister David Cameron’s Hunger Summit, they secured
pledges of more than $4 billion to fight world hunger. But for all their
efforts to address rising food prices, famine prevention and response, and food
distribution, hunger and malnutrition will continue unless one of its
fundamental root causes is addressed: the role of secure land rights –
especially for women.
The poorest and hungriest
people on the planet share three key traits: They live in rural areas, rely on
the land to survive, and have no legal rights to the land they rely on. This
means that the land on which they live or work is owned by someone else, such
as a large landowner or the government, and that they therefore have no control
over the land and do not have secure rights to stay there for the long term.
Often, these landless people are sharecroppers, day laborers, or indentured
servants.
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Many things lead to or
exacerbate landlessness. In many countries, there was highly unequal initial
land distribution, meaning a few people own much of the land. More recently,
rapid population growth, natural resource degradation, and conflict have led to
increased pressure on the land and a growing number of landless people.
Finally, women are especially vulnerable to becoming landless because of
inequitable inheritance practices.
This landlessness impacts
farmers in fundamental ways. It means they have no incentive to invest in the
land, with inputs like fertilizer, and no opportunity to make big decisions
about the land, like digging wells. Therefore, when they are able to make
decisions about what to farm, they generally aim to produce a crop that matures
quickly and requires little financial investment.
Obviously, this path that
does not lead to sustainable and robust farm output of nutritious food.
Conversely, when farmers have secure rights to the land they farm, that means
they can make improvements to and choices about the land without fear that it
might be taken from them.
The amount of land required
to help a family is not large. India has
seen great success boosting family nutrition by providing families with small
plots of land, as spotlighted in this video.
Landesa, the global development non-profit where I serve as a land tenure
specialist, worked with the governments of several Indian states to design and
implement programs that identify poor landless families and give them small
plots of government-owned or government-purchased land. So far, eleven states
across
Research shows
that land ownership leads farming families to invest in improvements to their
agricultural production. This increases food security for the family directly,
through increased food production, and indirectly, through increased incomes.
When women specifically
have secure land rights, research shows
these gains are even more pronounced. While male farmers may focus on cash
crops, women often focus on growing crops that
provide their family with good nutrition.
That impact goes even
further. A study in Ghana
showed that when women own a larger share of the household’s land, families
allocate a larger proportion of the household budget to food. Similarly, a
study in Nicaragua
and Honduras
found that families spend more on food when the woman of the house owns land.
Women with secure rights to
land are also more likely to control income and have higher status in the
household and community. Women are more likely than men
to make decisions that increase a household’s nutrition and to spend income on
the family. In fact, low-income female-headed households often have better nutrition
than male-headed households with higher incomes.
Furthermore, women with
higher status have better nutrition themselves, and we know that mothers with better nutrition are more
likely to have higher birth-weight children, a factor in
reducing the likelihood of stunted growth. In Nepal, research showed that the
likelihood that a child is severely underweight is reduced by half if the
child’s mother owns land.
At stake are the lives of
2.3 million children worldwide who die each year from hunger and so much more.
Just this May, Save the
Children’s Food for Thought
report found that malnourished children are much less likely to succeed in
school. The report explained that children who are malnourished in their first
two years grow up smaller and weaker, a condition known as stunting. These
children often suffer developmental delays and can go on to earn 20 percent
less income than those who are well nourished.
The report, based on
studies of children in Ethiopia,
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Landesa joins Save the
Children, UNICEF, and
other nongovernmental organizations calling on world leaders to commit to tackling
malnutrition immediately. Increasing support for land rights will lead to
better nutritional outcomes for children worldwide, and help to provide food
for the 165 million children currently suffering from malnutrition.
Amanda Richardson is an
attorney and land tenure specialist with Landesa, a global development
non-profit that works to secure land rights for the world’s poor. Follow the
group @Landesa_Global.