Without a significant boost in financial support for women farmers, there is little hope of one day achieving zero hunger. That according to the fourth and final report out of the Canadian Food Grains Bank Good Soils Campaign, Equal Harvests--How Investing in Agricultural Development Can Empower Women.

Carol Thiessen is a Senior Policy Advisor with CFGB and authored this latest report.

"All farmers are crucial in ending global hunger," she explains but adds this report focuses on women because "Women have been discriminated against, they have had unequal access to many of the resources that they need to be able to do the same things that male farmers do." While Thiessen says it's not that women farmers are the only farmers that are important to ending global hunger it's just that they've had so many barriers placed in their way for so many years, in so many countries, that it has been difficult for them to play the very important role that they do play.

Thiessen adds the role of women has often been ignored and there is a growing realization that women are fundamentally importantly, explaining they make up almost fifty per cent of the world's farmers. "And we can't end global hunger if we're ignoring...almost fifty per cent of the world's farmers."

She goes on to say that there is also a lot of research to support the claim that women are the key to household nutrition. "We actually have studies that show that household malnutrition decreases, so children get fed better, when women are more involved in farming and more involved in the decisions around farming and more involved in the decisions around how families prepare food - what kinds of food they eat and so forth."

It's one thing to identify the challenges and hurdles women farmers have faced and are facing, but it's another to come up with solutions to address them. Thiessen researched those options too and shared the three key investments in agriculture that can empower women farmers globally.

Thiessen says the first is improving access to productive resources.

"Before I started working on this report, I knew that many small-scale women farmers carry a heavy burden of farm and household work, but I didn’t realize just how difficult it is for women in developing countries to truly flourish as farmers," she added. "They generally work far longer each day than male farmers. And much of their work is unpaid and undervalued by others."

The second suggestion is to improve agency  where women’s control over assets and their decision-making power should be considered in agricultural interventions. This means working with communities, including men, to better value women.

"Their ability, their right, to be fully involved in the decisions that happen on a farm is crucial to seeing an end to global hunger," notes Thiessen.

Collective action is the third recommendation. Thiessen says agricultural investment should include a strong role for groups, as women can overcome discrimination more effectively when they work together.

Thiessen feels the country could be better supporting agriculture for women here at home and abroad and explains after the global food security crisis in 2007-08, wealthy countries, including Canada, greatly increased their aid for agriculture. But since then, Canada’s support has declined 30 percent from a high of about $450 million per year between 2009 and 2011.

In a release, CFGB Executive Director Jim Cornelius added "Canada’s new government has a strong commitment to empowering women. We see increasing aid for small-scale women farmers as an important way to embody that commitment."

"These investments can make a lasting impact on women, their families and the global community."

Equal Harvests is the fourth and final report in a series from the Foodgrains Bank on the benefits of agricultural development.  Earlier reports made economic, nutrition and environmental cases for aid investment in agriculture in developing countries. The reports can be found at www.foodgrainsbank.ca/goodsoil.