The Nigerian Women Who Went from Labourers for Hire to Landowners

Female farmers are working to close Oregon's gender gap in the agriculture industry. Communities like the OSU farm networks provide a forum where these women can share experiences.

Farmland is expensive and scarce in urban areas. In Boston Higher Ground Farm uses green roofs to grow its produce and Grove Lab has designed a cabinet for people to grow their vegetables indoors.

In just the next couple of decades, the World Bank says, farmers across Africa could lose more than half their cropland to drought and heat - the issue is considered so pressing that, a few years ago, Malawi's Department of Meteorological Services added "Climate Change" to its name. A new aid group group now works with farmers in more than 60 villages — with plans to expand — helping them become more resilient to a changing climate.

A Kenyan government initiative is helping a growing community of residents to tackle food insecurity in one of the largest slum areas in Africa, championing an unusual form of urban farming: sack gardens.

Many unskilled workers in Tanzania are women and, due to gender inequality, they are often disregarded and live with economic hardship. Oxfam Tanzania has a reality show that raises awareness of women farmers. The winners of the show go use their notoriety to promote women’s rights and improve the lives of other women farmers.

Limited fertile land and scarce water make traditional farming difficult in Kenya, so several organizations have begun teaching women how to farm out of sacks. The practice is spreading throughout Kenya and to other African nations.

Unlike other countries suffering with an impoverished population, Costa Rica has not destroyed the environment while modernizing its economy. Costa Rica has created a coffee alliance, a collective effort between the government and local farmers to grow and cultivate sustainable coffee agriculture through public policy and land distribution. The coffee alliance has given economic empowerment to the people, while being environmentally green.

A small agricultural co-op in the mountains of Veracruz, Mexico, has effectively implemented its own approach to climate change. The community adapts the main sector of its economy and livelihood-- farming-- to sustainable practices. "Las Cañadas" has increased the food security and health of the local community while simultaneously decreasing deforestation, soil degradation and carbon emissions.

In many parts of the world, not owning one's own land is more directly correlated to poverty than other factors such as illiteracy, but land reform is controversial, difficult, and expensive. A new program called Landesa is having success in India through a non-confiscatory model that gives families tennis-court size plots.

In Brazil, middlemen buy produce from small farmers at negligible prices to sell to the public school system for higher profits. A law requiring cities to buy 30 percent of their school meal budget from family farmers has helped the farmers and improved the quality of meals.