Thumbnail Image

What role can agricultural extension and advisory services play in realizing gender equality and improved nutrition?










Also available in:

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Thumbnail Image
    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    Making extension and advisory services nutrition-sensitive
    The link between agriculture and human nutrition
    2021
    Also available in:

    Human nutrition is vital for agriculture. Many smallholder farmers are food-insecure and suffer chronic or acute forms of malnutrition. This can permanently harm the physical and cognitive growth of children, while reducing productivity as household members are less able to carry out agricultural work. Agriculture is vital for human nutrition. Nutrition has long been considered mostly a health issue. However, agriculture plays an essential role in ensuring nutritional wellbeing not only for rural populations, but also for society as a whole. Beyond producing food in sufficient quantity, agri-food systems should also:
    • provide diversified, safe and nutritious foods;
    • improve rural incomes and resilience, and thus enhance access to healthy diets;
    • make foods that contribute to healthy diets available and accessible at national and sub-national levels.
    To this end, we must build the capacities of farmers, agriculture extensionists, consumers and others, encourage innovation, investments and enabling policies, and address gender issues. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) uses a food-based approach to agricultural development to make the global food system produce better nutritional outcomes.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (stand-alone)
    Towards gender-responsive agricultural extension services in Albania
    Assessment report
    2024
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    This publication assesses the extent, progress and challenges of providing gender-responsive agricultural extension services in Albania based on the FAO Gender and Rural Advisory Services Assessment Tool (GRAST) methodology. Even though agriculture is an important sector of the economy that accounts for 36 percent of overall employment in the country, informality is high and the engagement of low-skilled rural women in labour intensive activities is significant. Women in the context of family farms, are often considered to be unpaid “farm helpers”. This assessment identifies the key gaps at national, organizational and field levels that hinder the achievement of the relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the country’s progress towards inclusive and sustainable agrifood systems. In particular, the absence of evidence-based and sex-disaggregated data does not allow developing gender responsive services driven by a sound understanding of the gender-specific barriers that prevent farmers from accessing and benefiting from such services. Moreover, the lack of well-articulated and mainstreamed gender and social inclusion policies for targeting and reaching diverse women and men clients reduces progress towards national goals and commitments. Addressing rural women’s access to information, knowledge and services is essential for ensuring gender equality, reaching farm efficiency, sustainability and productivity, and contributing to the enhancement of livelihoods.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    Enabling entrepreneurship in extension and advisory services 2022
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    In the rapidly changing context of agri-food systems, extension and advisory services (EAS) are expected to provide new roles and services that go well beyond the traditional production-related technology transfer. Consequently, pluralistic EAS systems with diverse actors have emerged with diverse actors, including private and civil society organisations. These multiple EAS actors must adopt innovative entrepreneurship models if they are to act proactively and respond to the increasing diversity of farmers’ demands while staying independent and sustainable. Entrepreneurship in EAS means applying innovations such as creative and sustainable business models that can capture opportunities and new ideas, broaden the range of services and clients, and foster innovation in the agri-food system. It can strengthen autonomy (e.g. from donor funding), empower community-engaged providers that offer locally relevant services, create job opportunities, and strengthen resilience of EAS to shocks and disruptors. EAS entrepreneurs can include private agribusinesses, scalable start-ups, farmer champions and local volunteers, producer organisations and cooperatives, as well as public sector actors with innovative ideas who can network, create successful partnerships, and are result-oriented, willing to change and take risks. However, the development of appropriate EAS entrepreneurship models is conditioned by internal and external factors, like farmers’ demands, economic motivation, enabling and risk-mitigating policies and regulations, capacities and, perhaps most importantly, a profound mindset change of all the actors, moving towards sustainable and inclusive entrepreneurship and away from institutional silos, rigid public-only and big agribusiness-only schemes.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

No results found.