Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 293

Ram Ashish Yadav and Swati Virmani for their research assistance; and Teri Raney and
Andre Croppenstedt for sharing background material on women farmers and agricultural
productivity.
2. Halving meat consumption in the OECD countries, Brazil and China by 2030, could free
an estimated 200 million hectares or more of livestock-raising land globally, which, if used
for non-meat food production, could substantially improve food and nutrition security
in developing countries. (Presentation by Mark Rosegrant, Agriculture-Nutrition-Health
Linkages conference, New Delhi, February 2011).
3. IFPRI gives various scenarios for (spatially disaggregated) temperature rise, precipita-
tion, and so on. The illustrative estimates, cited here, are based on data from the National
Centre for Atmospheric Research (which uses IPCC information), and do not adjust for
“carbon dioxide fertilization.” Adjusted estimates still give adverse predictions (albeit less
so) for yields of major crops in developing countries.
4. See e.g. Agarwal (1994) for South Asia, and Saito et al. (1994) for Nigeria and Kenya. When
household heads were excluded from the sample, Saito et al. (1994: 48) found that a sub-
stantially lower percentage of female than male farmers had rights to even improve the
land, with implications for their relative productivity.
5. However, this does not tell us how much of all land is held by women, or what percentage
of all women hold land. To access this, we also need data on the intra-household distribu-
tion of land holdings, and not just distribution by head of household.
6. See FAO (2011: 23−4) and also studies for developing countries summarized in Anriquez
(2010).
7. See e.g. Adesina and Djato (1997), Adeleke, et al. (2008), Quisumbing, et al. (2001),
Moock (1976), Kumase, et al. (2008), Bindlish & Evenson (1993), and Hill and Vigneri
(2009).
8. See, Udry et al. (1995), Kumase, et al. (2008), Moock (1976), and Dey (1992).
9. I have focused on crops, but the argument that improving women's resource access could
increase output could be extended to other types of food, such as fish.
10. See e.g. Jodha (1986), Agarwal (1990, 2010a), and Mazhar et al. (2007). Mazhar, et al.
(2007) found that in Andhra Pradesh (south India), village women could identify seventy-
nine species of uncultivated leafy greens gathered for food, in addition to roots, tubers,
and fruits. In Bangladesh's Tangail district, such uncultivated plants provided, on average,
65% of the food weight of poor landless households and 34% of the food weight of better-
off landed households.
11. See Strauss and Beegle (1996) for India; Thomas (1990, 1994) for Brazil; and Quisumbing
and Maluccio (2000) for Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and South Africa.
12. For instance, in Asia, Bhutan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and most communities in the
Philippines have gender equal laws. For Latin America, see Deere and de Leon (2001) and
Lastarria-Cornhiel and Manji (2010).
13. See Agarwal (1994) for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka; Estudillo,
Quisumbing, & Keijiro (2001) for the Philippines; and various CEDAW reports for several
other countries.
14. Foster and Rosenzweig's (2010) analysis of panel data for 17 Indian states, for the period
1999 to 2008, shows that even consolidating marginal farms to reach 5 acres can signifi-
cantly increase profits per acre (1 acre = 0.4047 ha).
15. For Mexico, see specially, Runsten and Key (1996); for India, see Singh (2000) and Kumar
(2006); and for Africa, see Dolan (2001) and Maertens and Swinnen (2009).