Rural Women Feeding Latin America in Times of Climate Change

By Mariela Jara (IPS)

HAVANA TIMES – They plant and harvest the food consumed by families across Latin America. Yet rural women now find their already vulnerable situation worsening under the impact of climate crisis and gender inequality. As these two factors continue undermining the rights of rural women, governments show scant concern for their circumstances and the role they play.

Some 60 million women live in rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Of that total, 36% participate in the agrifood system under conditions of persistent disadvantage, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

“If women worldwide were able to produce as much as men, global GDP would increase by one trillion dollars,” stressed Paula Moreno, coordinator of FAO’s “Better Life” projects in Peru.

In an interview with IPS at the organization’s headquarters in Lima, she emphasized that addressing the situation of rural women has implications beyond social justice.

“It is an opportunity to reduce poverty and food insecurity, creating synergies that allow existing policies to work better, with women participating in decision-making.”

October 15 marks the International Day of Rural Women. Established by the United Nations in December 2007, it was first observed the following year to recognize the fundamental contribution of rural and Indigenous women to agricultural development, food security, and poverty eradication.

The current year, 2026, is also International Year of the Woman Farmer, and the October 15th commemoration will take place within the context of these larger objectives. This global campaign, approved by the UN and led by FAO, carries the slogan “Empowered Women, Transformed Agrifood Systems.” It seeks to highlight women’s leadership in this sector and to accelerate gender equality.

Although women contribute 70% of the food consumed by households worldwide, their contribution is
undervalued, and measures to eliminate discrimination are advancing very slowly, according to the new FAO report, “The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems.”

A regional analysis for Latin America and the Caribbean, published by FAO in 2025, highlights that nearly
half of women working in agriculture receive no pay because their work is considered merely part of their family support.

Furthermore, production on land managed by women is 24% lower than that of their male counterparts on plots of the same size, due to gaps in access to agricultural inputs, training, and technology. Land
ownership is concentrated among male farmers; in Honduras, for example, women account for barely 30% of landowners.

Even though women participate in every stage of the agricultural cycle, food insecurity in the region
shows a gender gap of 9% to their disadvantage. Added to this are the effects on their physical and
mental health caused by the excessive burden of caregiving responsibilities.

The study points to particularly troubling cases such as Guatemala, where women devote more than 22% of their day to these activities, compared with 3.9% for men.

Climate change is worsening the situation

Referring to the situation in Peru, Paula Moreno said that family farming, practiced on plots smaller than
five acres, faces serious problems involving land tenure, lack of property titles, insufficient technical
assistance, and limited access to financing.

“Within this panorama, women are in an even more critical situation,” she added, describing a reality shared by most rural women throughout Latin America.

The outlook becomes even more difficult when the effects of climate change are considered. “There is a
global estimate that each climate impact affects women 3% more than male farmers,”; she said,
referring to the vulnerability created by gender inequality.

Moreno explained that women farmers lack insurance and financing to take preventive measures and
receive little technical assistance because their heavy caregiving responsibilities leave them with limited
time.

“And because women hold fewer property titles, they are excluded from programs designed to restore
livelihoods after an emergency: if there’s a natural disaster, they don’t receive seeds or other supplies to help them recover,” she explained. This is the case of Julia Mamani, an Aymara farmer in the South Andean region of Puno, Peru, where extreme drought is fueling wildfires. The fires have become almost
uncontrollable because of strong winds and vast expanses of dry grassland.

“We have no water at all these days. We’ve been dry for a month, and now there are fires. In my community, we managed to stop the wildfire, but it moved farther away, toward my neighbors… There it burned everything – the cattle, the sheep..” Her voice breaks as she recounts what happened.

Julia lives in the community of Rivera Coylata, located more than 13,000 feet above sea level in the
municipality of Lampa, in the province of the same name. Speaking by telephone from Puno, the
departmental capital, she explained that she had gone to inform authorities about the situation facing rural communities. She added that this was the worst fire she can remember.

The climate crisis is being felt intensely in Puno, a region with more than 1.2 million inhabitants and a
poverty rate approaching 40%.

Eight of its 11 provinces are at risk of wildfires, while 385 fires have already occurred nationwide.
Weather conditions marked by a lack of rainfall, dry soils, rising temperatures, and winds, aggravated by
the 2026–2027 El Niño phenomenon, are making the situation worse.

“In my community, the springs have dried up, and we haven’t been able to plant anything. August was the time to sow quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), but it hasn’t rained. We don’t know whether we’ll be able to plant potatoes at the end of October. The alfalfa and oats we grow for our animals aren’t sprouting either. The drought and cold are leaving us without a harvest,” she lamented.

She has no agricultural insurance to compensate for her losses. Furthermore, the government is almost
entirely absent when it comes to initiatives aimed at preventing the impacts of climate change and
mitigating the damage.

Countries in this region are highly exposed to the combined impacts of climate change and El Niño.
A study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicates that these
impacts will vary depending on each country’s characteristics and the vulnerability of its populations and
ecosystems.

ECLAC’s Special Report #3, “The Effects of El Niño in Latin America and the Caribbean and Recommendations for Addressing Them,” published in September 2026, estimates that approximately 4.8 million people could fall into poverty as a result of impacts on various economic activities, including agriculture.
Given the structural inequality that places rural women at a disadvantage, along with the close
relationships between nature and their daily activities, they are likely to be the ones most affected by these projections.

Pillars of Strength Despite Everything

Even amid this crisis, rural women play a vital role in food security and food sovereignty, as their work in
family farming supplies households with a variety of products and helps preserve biodiversity.

Martha Cuenca, executive director of the NGO Fomento de la Vida (Fovida), a Peruvian institution with 43 years of experience in development, including rural issues and family farming, emphasized that rural women make these contributions while standing on the front lines in defense of their territories, the environment, and their ancestral knowledge.

She noted that agriculture is becoming increasingly feminized because men are migrating to illegal
activities in search of income. Extreme weather events also cause economic losses and destroy assets
needed for future planting, pushing men to seek employment in cities.

“Women are left in charge of everything. They face climate change and everything that comes with El
Niño. Gender inequalities increase, and their caregiving workload doubles. Even so, they not only
produce food but are also recovering and preserving native seeds, which are the resource, the asset, that allows them to continue living,” Martha Cuenca stated.

Fovida carries out initiatives aimed at “dismantling the patriarchal culture” that forms the basis of gender discrimination in rural areas. These include encouraging shared responsibility between men and women in the home, the community, and public life, as well as promoting changes to community bylaws to guarantee women’s right to speak and vote in assemblies.

In Peru, a country of 34 million inhabitants, the rural female population is estimated at 3.5 million, of
whom approximately 700,000 are primarily engaged in traditional family farming.

Cuenca explained that her organization’s agro-ecology training program offers a development approach
designed to promote environmentally sustainable communities.

She expressed concern about the possibility of further setbacks in gender equality and women’s rights
under the current far-right government of Keiko Fujimori, complicating the demands for women’s empowerment, gender equality, and the development of family farming, particularly given the extensive support provided to the agricultural export industry.

First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

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