Without an inclusivity-driven approach, changes to agri-food systems risk reinforcing existing inequalities. New guidance notes from Evidensia, ISEAL and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) explore the key interventions.

Persistent inequities in food systems impact workers across gender, employment opportunities and conditions, and access to technology.

Gender-positive action, equitable digital innovations and strengthening labour standards all help create inclusive and decent employment in agri-food systems. 

Despite progress, women, smallholders and marginalised groups continue to face significant barriers in achieving fair wages, secure jobs, and equitable access to digital tools. 

Robust and unambiguous evidence clearly supporting action is not always available, and case studies are not always readily transferred between contexts either. This makes decision-making for actors in this complex ecosystem even more difficult. 

Evidensia, ISEAL and CGIAR recently published a series of guidance notes on these topics as part of the Rethinking Food Markets initiative. The guidance notes blend evidence from researchers in the Rethinking Food Markets Initiative with Evidensia’s own resources and ISEAL’s credibility guidance and tools.

The notes aim to provide confidence to agri-food actors, who are attempting to navigate these thorny issues globally, often without clear evidence at their fingertips.

Learn more about the guidance notes

Women in food systems face lower wages, less secure employment and higher risk of exploitation. While participation in global value chains can offer better job conditions, improvements remain uneven. 

This briefing note blends an overview of gender equity issues in food system employment, with recommendations from the recently developed Gender equity toolkit and good practices guide from ISEAL. 

The toolkit was developed under the Rethinking Food Markets Initiatives’ sister initiative HER+.

Some recommendations to promote gender-positive actions suggest that food system employers and buyers should:

• Develop a tailored gender strategy, with the aim of centring gender as an issue. Hiring a dedicated gender advisor can be a wise investment for larger organisations.
• Strengthen organisational capacities via implementing gender-sensitive policies and ‘do no harm’ practices, supporting women’s leadership, addressing unpaid care work, preventing harassment, and ensuring accountability for gender equality within organisations. Buyers can influence the supply chain by encouraging inclusive supplier practices and procurement requirements.

Ensuring equitable digital innovations

Digital transformation in agriculture holds promise but also risks deepening existing inequalities. Women and marginalised groups often face greater barriers to accessing and benefitting from digital tools. 

This guidance note combines a brief review of research on the trade-offs, challenges and common equity issues in digital innovations for food systems with an equity framework, developed by ISEAL to encourage consideration of equity across all sectors. 

The review ends by applying the framework to two pilot projects from the Rethinking Food Markets initiative.

The paper offers several recommendations, suggesting principally that:

• Technology developers and internet providers should prioritise accessibility.
• Governments and regulators should lead on equity by addressing structural issues like the ‘digital divide’, acting as financing partners to promote equity, tackling digital exclusion, addressing environmental impacts, and protecting against exploitation of digital users.
• Unions, civil society, and cooperatives should ensure value and representation for the most marginalised actors.

Strengthening decent work through inclusive standards

This note brings together findings from the meta-studies “Creating more and better employment in agrifood systems” by Julio Berdegue et al (2023) and the systematic review “Effectiveness of supply-chain sustainability approaches on decent work outcomes in the agriculture sector” authored by Carlos Oya and Dafni Skalidou (2024).  The latter was commissioned by Evidensia, ISEAL, IDH and Rainforest Alliance.

The authors state that strengthening employment conditions in these systems requires:

• Improvements in wages and remuneration, with specific recommendations that standard-setting organisations should extend labour standards requirements to cover all workers and should require price premiums. Demand-side actors should also educate consumers on ‘living wages’ and develop economic roadmaps to achieve wage minimums.
• Strengthening of terms and conditions. Sustainability systems can support this by providing contract templates and training for farmers and workers.
• Amplifying workers’ voices and representation. Government groups, advocacy groups, and sustainability systems should strengthen the capacity of local unions for collective action and advocate for union presence in agriculture.

Tackling inequities in food systems requires a multi-faceted approach: gender equity, strengthening labour protections, and ensuring digital innovations serve all stakeholders.

A mixture of robust evidence and frameworks for action will help organisations, policymakers and value chain actors step more confidently towards a fairer, more inclusive food system.