Pervasive poverty is one of the main causes of child labour in rural areas; it is also one of the consequences.

Last week, Washington hosted the first International Conference on Child Labour in Agriculture, where 160 participants from 50 countries, representing governments, international labour and development organizations, trade unions, teachers and farmers organizations, NGOs and corporations mapped out a framework committing themselves to action.

FAO’s Bernd Seiffert chaired a conference workshop on addressing child labour in neglected agricultural sub-sectors, such as fishing, forestry and livestock-keeping.

“The agriculture sector is under-regulated in many countries, and much labour legislation either explicitly excludes the informal sector and self-employed smallholders or is not enforced,” Seiffert says.

Learn more about the challenges of addressing child labour in the agriculture sector and Cambodia’s recent efforts to tackle the issue in its fisheries sector.

There are 67 million undernourished people in the region and 3.5 million living with HIV, a large percentage of them rural women. In emergency situations, risks of HIV infection increase through displacement, exposure to sexual exploitation, abuse and gender-based violence.

Last week the global AIDS community converged on Washington, DC, for the 19th International AIDS Conference. Among the nearly 24,000 conference participants was Karine Garnier who manages a regional FAO project supporting people affected by HIV and gender inequality in Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

Rural communities in these countries are improving their livelihoods and nutrition through training sessions using the junior and adult Farmer Field and Life School methodology, where farmers learn through observation and experimentation in their own fields and communities.

The project has reached 80,000 men, women and children with a curriculum aimed at increasing awareness of gender issues, reducing the stigma of HIV and improving nutrition levels and food security.

Says Garnier:

“The farmers are there for their own economic benefit, but the social outcome is also very good.”

Read the full interview with Garnier: Addressing HIV in emergencies

Watch a video profiling the project’s Junior and Adult Farmer Field Schools in Northern Uganda: Empowered over their fields, empowered over their lives.

Food security and climate change urges every country to develop its own strategy to manage climate change and risks. The coping capacity of the poor will have to be strengthened, since poor nations and the poor in all countries will be the first and hardest hit by adverse changes in climate, the report says. Action will be needed to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of coastal communities. Countries will also have to be prepared, where necessary, to resettle “climate refugees”.

The report says that food production has to be insulated to the extent possible from climate change impacts, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, which are among the most vulnerable regions to changes in temperature and precipitation and also the regions with the highest rates of malnutrition.

Social protection for food security recommends that all countries design and implement a comprehensive legally empowered social protection system to provide every citizen an opportunity for a productive and healthy life. It notes that whereas families and communities used to look after their most vulnerable members, now governments are assuming the responsibility for providing appropriate social protection measures to prevent poverty-induced hunger.

At the global level, the report recommends that the Committee on World Food Security help in bringing out an Annual Social Protection Monitor, which would provide data on the steps taken in different countries to achieve the goal of sustainable food security through a rights and life-cycle approach to entitlements. Indicators to measure the impact of social safety net programmes should include a gender audit as well, the report says.

Read more: Food security and climate change | Social protection for food security

UNICEF child protection expert Djanabou Mahonde says:

“The fear is, if the food crisis continues, that more parents will use marriage as a survival strategy and that we’ll see more girls married before the age of 15.”

The Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development’s (AIARD) annual conference, held here from 3 to 6 June, focused on inclusive agriculture and rural development.

I attended the first day of the conference in order to better understand how smallholder farmers can be integrated into value chains. As a student profoundly moved by the issue of hunger, I see the importance of ensuring that smallholder farmers have the proper support to be able to participate in markets. The majority of hungry people live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for subsistence. If smallholder farmers had access to the proper tools and resources, such as inputs, financial services and better infrastructure, food production would increase and hunger would be greatly reduced.

Recently, the focus of development agencies has been on market-led approaches. Indeed, the attention given to the development of value chains does provide opportunities, but poor households risk being left out of the equation. Some development activities focus on poor smallholders, where market inclusion is a challenge, while other activities focus on value chain development, which often overlooks the needs of resource-poor smallholders. The conference I attended argued that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

The conference brought together important thinkers to grapple with the topics of inclusive agriculture, rural development, making markets work for all, and integrating public- and private-sector extension services.

Doyle Baker of FAO’s Rural Infrastructure and Agro-Industries Division moderated the first two panels. He opened the conference with a discussion on how to realistically and sustainably enable inclusiveness in conjunction with a market-based approach. This development paradigm is effective only when a broad range of actors and initiatives are utilized, which explains the multi-faceted representation at the conference. For example, the Assistant Administrator of USAID spoke of how Feed the Future is working with value chain development and smallholders; the president of Heifer International touched on the importance of developing social capital; and other experts spoke on the importance and potential of extension services. These speakers and others highlighted the challenges in making markets work for all, and their presentations were followed by small group discussions related to how these challenges can be overcome.

The most inspiring portion of the conference was when AIARD’s Future Leaders – a select group of students chosen for their sincere interest in international agriculture and rural development issues – were introduced to the conference attendees.

As a student (admittedly younger than all of the Future Leaders), witnessing the energy and knowledge that these young people bring to the issues that confront our world was invigorating. Faced with the prospect of 9 billion people on the planet by 2050, natural resource constraints, and climate change, the abundant energy that these future leaders bring is not only motivational but absolutely essential for achieving a world where the scourge of hunger is no more.

“God first, then man, then camel and lastly girl” – the proverb comes from the Gabra community of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, but iterations of this pecking order can be found in communities around the world.

Despite the crucial role that women and girls play in their households and communities, they are all too often seen as a burden not a boon. To change such perceptions (and proverbs), we need to give girls and women access to the resources and opportunities they need to realize their full economic potential.

We also need to create opportunities for women and girls to participate in decision-making. The G(irls)20 Summit does this by providing a group of extraordinary young women a platform to voice their views on how girls and women can play a leading role in global economic development. This year’s summit will focus on the opportunity gained in terms of strategically engaging women in agriculture and the opportunity lost as a result of violence against women.

Women make up, on average, 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, but only comprise between 3 and 20 percent of agricultural landholders, with huge variations from country to country.

Female farmers produce less than male farmers, not because they are worse farmers, but because they don’t have the same access as men to agricultural inputs like fertilizer and seed or do not have the same rights as men to buy, sell or inherit land, to open a savings account or borrow money, to sign a contract or sell their produce.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) most recent State of Food and Agriculture report, just giving women the same access as men to seeds, fertilizer and tools could increase production on women’s farms in developing countries by 20 to 30 percent. That’s enough to lift up to 150 million of the world’s hungry people – more than the entire population of France and the United Kingdom combined – out of hunger.

FAO estimates that feeding a global population of just over 9 billion in 2050 will require a 60 percent increase in global food production, three-fourths of which will need to come from developing countries. An additional alternative that we all need to be exploring is how to drastically reduce food waste, since currently one-third of all food produced is wasted rather than consumed.

As President Obama noted last week on the eve of the G8 summit at Camp David, fighting hunger and poverty requires “all hands on deck”. If we fail to empower women and girls and continue to waste half our human potential, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our back.

Disparities in progress between men and women and between urban and rural areas persist beyond the agriculture sector. Globally, rural women and girls lag far behind urban women and girls and men and boys in every Millennium Development Goal indicator, with precious few exceptions.

Work in the fields combined with household tasks, like preparing food, caring for children and walking miles to fetch water and fuel wood, creates a double burden for women and girls. This burden often prevents them from engaging in income-generating work or attending school, and sometimes places them at increased risk of violence when they are forced to travel great distances from their homes on a daily basis.

Rural women are far likelier to be illiterate, under- or unemployed, to suffer domestic violence and to have less access to services, including prenatal services, than urban women. The children of poor rural women are twice as likely to be underweight, and malnourished girls become malnourished mothers, whose children are 40 percent more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children born in a city.

If we don’t break this cycle now, it will continue to undermine children’s mental and physical development, productivity and health, hobbling our countries’ economic development.

In developing countries economic growth originating in the agricultural sector is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth originating elsewhere. To solve the problems of poverty and hunger, the agriculture sector in these countries – particularly smallholder agriculture in which women are the driving force – needs to be more efficient.

That’s why FAO has placed gender equity in access to resources, goods, services and decision-making among its key strategic objectives, recently launching a policy on gender equality that commits the organization to, among other goals, targeting 30 percent of its operational work and budget at the regional and country levels to women-specific interventions by 2017.

The future of agriculture in developing countries depends on today’s young women and men. FAO’s Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools help create opportunities in farming that match young people’s aspirations for a better future by providing them with agricultural as well as life skills. They learn how to solve problems related to soil, water and nutrient management, but also about gender equality, HIV/AIDS prevention and other social and health issues critical to their survival and futures.

Social and economic inequalities between men and women undermine food security and constrain economic growth and advances in agriculture. My hope is that the G(irls) 20 Summit will help inspire young women to identify ways to level the playing field by prioritizing girls and women as the first step in building a world in which girls won’t be eating last and least but will instead become women leading, on an equal footing with men, the economic growth and development of their communities.

Yesterday Marketplace aired a piece by Cecilia Vaisman about Brazil’s Zero Hunger program and the lessons it might teach the rest of the world about reducing hunger and poverty. FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva was the architect of the program when he served as Brazil’s Special Minister of Food Security and the Fight against Hunger under President Lula da Silva.

Earlier in the week, the PBS Newshour profiled the activities of the One Acre Fund, which is working to help small-scale farmers in Kenya and Rwanda feed their families and turn a profit by offering low-cost credit, insurance, seeds and fertilizers. The story also looks at efforts to link farmers to markets, and at the challenges of scaling up.

By looking beyond indicators like income and education, the Index aims to present a more precise picture that can help national governments and development partners better monitor the effectiveness of their efforts towards empowering women in the global fight against hunger and poverty.

At the launch in New York, FAO Deputy Director-General Ann Tutwiler welcomed the initiative as an “important contribution”:

“We all agree on the need to have better metrics to both measure our progress, but more importantly, to identify where the needs are.

“As development professionals, we want to do everything, and we want to do everything everywhere. Being able to identify where the biggest intervention points are is important for governments, donors and development agencies.”

Developed in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative of Oxford University, the Index has been piloted in Bangladesh, Guatemala and Uganda.

Read more on the USAID Impact blog.

FAO’s most recent State of Food and Agriculture report found that just giving women the same access as men to land, credit, tools, improved seeds and other agricultural resources could increase production on women’s farms in developing countries by 20 to 30 percent – enough to feed up to 150 million more of the world’s hungry people.

Women make up, on average, 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries. To boost global food production by the 60 percent FAO estimates is required to feed a global population of over 9 billion in 2050, agriculture – particularly smallholder agriculture in which women are the driving force – will need to play a much more effective role.

Worldwide, less than 20 percent of agricultural landholders are women due to legal and cultural constraints in land inheritance, ownership and use. Women represent fewer than 5 percent of all agricultural landholders in North Africa and West Asia, while across sub-Saharan Africa, they make up on average 15 percent.

And disparities in progress between men and women and between urban and rural areas persist beyond the agriculture sector. Rural girls are more likely to be out of school than rural boys and twice as likely as urban girls to be out of school. Rural women are far likelier to be illiterate, under- or unemployed, to suffer domestic violence and to have less access to services, including prenatal services, than urban women.

Speaking on behalf of the three Rome-based food agencies at the Commission’s opening session yesterday, FAO Deputy Director-General Ann Tutwiler highlighted the devastating costs of such inequality for future generations:

“Malnourished rural girls become malnourished rural mothers, whose children are 40 percent more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children born in a city. If the cycle is not broken, it will continue to undermine children’s mental and physical development, productivity and health.”

Watch her full address below: