What is the Crop Gap?

Women farmers are critical to global food production, but lack access to the same resources as their male counterparts such as land, financing, markets, tools and training. We refer to this combination of barriers as the Crop Gap.

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Closing the Crop Gap

We’ve partnered with CARE to launch a global campaign that gives a platform to five female farmers in India, Egypt, Guatemala, Poland and the United States to tell their stories about the challenges they face, like so many women throughout the world. Through their stories, we hope to start a conversation about why it’s important to work together towards finding solutions to close the Crop Gap.

See these women’s stories below, and learn more about the local filmmakers who captured them. Stay tuned for your chance to watch their videos on March 7th and for your opportunity to get involved in Closing the Crop Gap.

Meet the Filmmakers
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Huntingburg, Indiana, USA

A natural passion for dairy farming was instilled in Sam from a very young age. Born and raised on her family’s Southern Indiana dairy farm, Sam is a fourth generation farmer—raising and milking cows as she proudly continues her family’s tradition.

Sam has spent her whole life in the dairy business and has experienced how women in leadership and decision-making roles truly enrich agricultural initiatives and impact. Sam showcases a strong female voice and presence in local and national leadership positions, and hopes that more women can take a seat at the table.

Chimaltenango, Guatemala

Maria Elena stopped going to school after sixth grade, but if she had the opportunity, she says she would’ve become an accountant—she never liked the expectation that women should be housewives. Today she’s an entrepreneur and farmer, growing crops including oyster mushrooms, green beans, peas and zucchini, and making marmalades. She pursues her business with passion, and considers it her art.

When she first started farming, her neighbors thought she was crazy because the work she was doing was considered men’s work, but eventually her community came to realize that her produce was better than what male farmers were producing. Despite all the progress she’s made, it’s still a challenge for her to get financing for her business and to find regular markets for her products.

Chhattisgarh, India

Sunita lives with her husband, young son, brother-in-law and mother-in-law on her small farm in Chhattisgarh, India. There are limited opportunities to make money in her village, so her husband often had to leave town to seek work, leaving Sunita to manage the household and fields alone.

For years she struggled to feed her family, and had to rely on moneylenders to help meet basic needs. Without access to resources like information on modern farming techniques and climate-appropriate seeds, her crop yields suffered, and Sunita was forced to work as a laborer and maid in addition to managing the household and farm.

Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Poland

When Bozena first started farming more than 25 years ago, she had a very small field where she grew vegetables. Each day, she would harvest the vegetables by herself, then go to the market early in the morning, and spend long, grueling hours on her feet selling her produce at her vegetable stall.

Without access to financing for additional land, specialized machinery, and information on modern farming techniques and technology, she worked long, exhausting days, and struggled to grow her business. Through many years of hard work, she’s grown her business and now specializes in potatoes, but still has to overcome many challenges as a female farmer.

Asyut, Egypt

Eman is a small-scale farmer living in upper Egypt, suporting her three young children. She rents a small piece of land where she grows corn and cloves, and raises livestock. Though women in Egypt don’t usually farm, she does all of the work by herself, and takes a great deal of pride in her work.

Although she is a trailblazer as a female farmer, she struggles to access resources, information, and financing to support her household and farming business. She also faces unique cultural barriers around land ownership, as women’s rights to land are not always respected nor enforced.

About the Crop Gap

Women farmers play a critical role in global food production and represent 43% of agriculture labor in developing countries.[1] Yet female farmers in many parts of the world may work more hours than men, are less likely to hold land titles, and have less access than men to the financial credit to buy key inputs like fertilizers, quality seeds and machinery. They are also less likely to have received education, training and other forms of support.[2] If women farmers had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30% – and potentially reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 100-150 million.[3]

How This Campaign Contributes to Change

Through Closing the Crop Gap, we seek to raise awareness of the shared challenges the food system faces with respect to gender equality, and aim to create a dialogue with the goal of advancing gender equality in global agriculture. As one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, and an advocate for a more sustainable food system, PepsiCo is contributing to the discussion and action that is directed to real solutions.

Female farmers not only face specific challenges to play a full and equitable role in global agriculture, but the immense contribution to food production that they still manage to make is often underestimated. Through the Closing the Crop Gap campaign, PepsiCo aims to raise the profile of women in agriculture and give them a platform to tell their own stories in their own voice, and to use this as an impetus to build new momentum and new partnerships to advance gender equity in global agriculture.

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