Markets and Trade
Gender equality is essential to achieve FAO’s mandate of a world free from hunger, malnutrition and poverty. FAO is committed to achieving equality between women and men in sustainable agriculture and rural development for the elimination of hunger and poverty. The Markets and Trade Division (EST) contributes to FAO’s objective to ensure that women and men have equal rights and access to agrifood markets, trade and decent work, and equal control over the resulting income and benefits, in alignment with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
EST provides technical support to Members Countries in the implementation of evidence-based gender-responsive programmes, policies, strategies, and practices to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood markets, value chains and trade. This support includes gender analyses, gender-sensitive knowledge generation and dissemination, sharing best practices, multistakeholder dialogues, and capacity-development initiatives, among others. These activities contribute to FAO’s goal to ensure that promoting gender equality and eliminating gender-based discriminations are effectively pursued at all levels of FAO’s work programme and organizational culture, in compliance with the FAO Policy on Gender Equality 2020-2030.
Key messages
| Agrifood trade is an engine for sustainable and inclusive development,
leading to social and economic outcomes that are potentially conducive
to gender equality and women’s empowerment. |
| Gender inequalities create constraints to women’s access to domestic and
international agrifood markets and impact agricultural value chain
development, trade performance and economic growth. |
| By removing gender barriers to domestic and international trade, gender-responsive agricultural and trade policies foster a more gender-equitable trade environment and promote an inclusive market-led transformation of the agricultural sector. |
Highlight publications on gender
Gender publication collection
Private Standards In The United States And European Union Markets For Fruit And Vegetables
01/01/2007
Over the past 20 years the number of standards and certification programmes for agricultural production has grown rapidly. Producers who want to export are confronted not only by a plethora of import regulations, but also within import countries by different niche markets for which specific requirements have to be fulfilled. While the adoption of voluntary standards may grant export opportunities to farmers, they can also be considered barriers to entry for those who cannot apply them either because they are too onerous or because of the lack of knowledge about their requirements. In fact, some producers and exporters increasingly regard private standards as non‑tariff barriers to trade. New and more stringent standards are being developed year after year, and there is an urgent need to determine today, and in the future, the extent to which these govern world trade. This report gives an overview of standards and certification programmes relevant for fruit and v egetable producers and exporters in developing countries with a focus on the markets of the United States and the European Union. In addition, it gives an overview of current analytical work on standards and trade, reviews major assistance programmes related to standards and provides recommendations for further research.
The impact of import surges: country case study results for Senegal and Tanzania
01/01/2005
Measuring the impacts of import surges is a difficult task, but simple case studies illustrate some of the fundamental issues. From the two case studies examined in this paper, it was found that the impacts vary markedly in different settings and for different commodities. Thus, for example, while the negative impact on Senegal’s broiler industry came out clearly, import surges were not an issue in the case of dairy products. This was because dairy imports, although high, had increased steadily over a longer period of time and as a result the local industry had adjusted. In the case of Tanzania, some negative effects were found for the dairy sub-sector but only limited effects on poultry. In both countries, rapid growth in poultry imports also revealed the weaknesses of the domestic processing industry in competing with imported products, particularly in situations where there has been rapid growth in demand for further processed quality products by supermarkets and hotels which the lo cal industry has failed to supply.