Involving Women in Outgrower Schemes

Involving Women in OutgrowerSchemes. Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services. Cathy Rozel Farnworth, Ambra Gallina

This Technical Note (September 2017, 29 pages) focuses primarily on recommendations for outgrower schemes working with smallholder farmers.

• Given the importance of nucleus estates to some of these schemes, the TN provides some suggestions for improving the working conditions of women on nucleus estates. 
• The TN focuses primarily on measures for including women, but since the farming of the future relies on motivating young women and men to stay in the sector, a number of recommendations specifically address youth. 
• All recommendations are taken from genuine case studies, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa with a few from Asia. 
• Given the geographic diversity, the recommendations should be considered as a menu of options. 
• Companies can select, mix, and adapt recommendations to create their own blend, confident in the knowledge that these recommendations have succeeded elsewhere. 
• The literature list appended to the TN provides some of the sources and further ideas.

Related:
INGENAES: Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services

INGENAES is designed to assist partners in Feed the Future countries (www.feedthefuture.gov):

• to build more robust, gender-responsive, and nutrition-sensitive institutions, projects and programs capable of assessing and responding to the needs of both men and women farmers through EAS; 
• disseminate gender-appropriate and nutrition-enhancing technologies and access to inputs to improve women’s agricultural productivity and enhance household nutrition; 
• identify, test efficacy, and scale proven mechanisms for delivering improved EAS to women farmer;
•  and apply effective, nutrition-sensitive, extension approaches and tools for engaging both men and women. 

INGENAES wants to improve agricultural livelihoods focusing on strengthening extension and advisory services to empower and engage smallholder farmers, male and female.

Additional resources:

Feeding the Fish, Feeding Sierra Leone
Jun 14, 2017. Fish is one of the most popular animal-source proteins consumed in Sierra Leone, and fish farmers like those in Tonkolili are becoming important producers as marine fish availability declines.
Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture Messaging
May 18, 2017. Tip Sheet to help extension workers support farm households to improve nutrition and health. Workers will be able to better recognize and support the different needs of women and men in agriculture.
Conceptualizing the Contribution of Agricultural Extension Services to Nutrition
May 16, 2017
This discussion paper addresses the specific contribution that AES can make to food and nutrition security in a way that is consistent with AES’s primary functions.
Integrating Gender-Responsive & Nutrition Sensitive Approaches When Working with Farmer Groups Engaged in Markets
May 16, 2017 This Training of Trainers Manual has been designed for use by government, private, and NGO extension providers and rural development practitioners who will be planning and implementing village-level agricultural interventions to strengthen their capacity to integrate gender and nutrition.
Gender and Nutrition Measurement Tools: Evaluating Their Appropriateness in the Context of Zambia
Apr 19, 2017. Zambia remains one of the countries with the highest levels of malnutrition on the African continent, despite increasing investment to curb the situation. Similarly, Zambia continues to perform poorly on gender equality.

Inside Look: Women Farmers' Access to Markets, Bangladesh
Apr 03, 2017. This video is about the Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services (INGENAES) program's monitoring and evaluation work with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Caritas in two districts in Bangladesh.
INGENAES Inside Look: Gender and Nutrition in Extension Workshops
Apr 03, 2017 Jan Henderson gives an inside look at participatory gender and nutrition workshops hosted through extension organization, government, and NGO partnerships with INGENAES.
Infant Feeding and Exposure to Aflatoxins
Mar 27, 2017. Aflatoxins play an important role in household health and nutrition. Aflatoxins are fungal toxins produced by Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Aspergillus is a common form of mold that can colonize and contaminate food before harvest or during storage, especially following a drought.