70% of Nigeria’s food farmers, processors are women — UN

The United Nations has revealed that women make up approximately 70% of the workforce involved in food crop production, processing, and commercialisation in Nigeria, but face significant barriers in accessing land, finance, technology, markets, and productive resources. At a press conference in Abuja to mark the International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026, the FAO Representative in Nigeria and ECOWAS, Dr. Hussein Gadain, highlighted the indispensable role of women in Nigeria's agrifood systems and the need for greater investment in women-led agrifood enterprises, improved access to resources, better technologies, enhanced market opportunities, and increased participation in agricultural governance.

UN Women Country Representative Ms. Beatrice Eyong emphasized that structural barriers, such as limited access to land and finance, hinder women's ability to perform optimally in agriculture, and warned that climate change could exacerbate these challenges by pushing women to assume even greater workloads as they compete for diminishing fertile land.

Brief written by urgent.news from Punch's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.