Our latest research, led by students Andréa Georgenes, Mia Ingram, and Leanna Cameron, under the guidance of Professors Chris Bacon and Bill Sundstrom, explores the connection between gender equity and agricultural practices. Agroecology has been shown to positively influence gender relations within households, impacting food and nutritional security. However, women often face systemic barriers limiting their access to resources and decision-making roles. By exploring how gendered patterns in land ownership, farm management, and market access shape agroecological systems, this study highlights the need for addressing gender inequalities. With a focus on smallholder coffee in the Segovias, cacao in Waslala, and vegetable farmers in Jinotega, Nicaragua, the research correlates agroecology strategies with women’s empowerment, food security, and labor burdens.
This work highlights the importance of considering gender perspectives in future agricultural research and policy to enhance both equity and food system resilience. The study found regional differences in household decision-making by gender. In Segovias, women or both partners were more likely to make decisions, likely influenced by coffee co-ops’ gender equity efforts. While initial expectations suggested significant gendered differences in survey responses, statistical analysis showed fewer disparities than anticipated. However, qualitative findings highlight key differences in economic impacts, gender dynamics, household relations, and food security (Fig. 2). No statistically significant trends emerged across the four measured categories, underscoring the complexity of gender roles in agroecology.
This project studies how households, small-scale farmers, and institutions respond to a complex and changing set of multiple challenges. These include climate change, droughts and severe storms; current livelihood challenges associated with general poverty and household risk exposure; crop pathogens such as the coffee leaf rust; political instability; and fluctuations in the prices of agricultural products, both bought and sold. Two late season hurricanes slammed into Central America and impacted the study area in central Nicaragua in November 2020, representing a large-scale extreme event affecting the rural residents in this study. Our focus is on the development, adoption and effectiveness of innovations and alternative strategies to deal with multiple hazards, with a particular emphasis on agricultural and household livelihood diversification, but also institutional and community-based responses. We seek to develop a replicable set of field research tools and a broader participatory process that will identify strategies that can guide recovery and rehabilitation efforts and inform longer term adaptation to climate change and other hazards in Central America and beyond.
Recent publications related to this work include:
Bacon, Christopher M. and Flores Gomez, Maria Eugenia and Shin, Vanessa and Ballardo, Gabi and Kriese, Skyler and McCurry, Emma and Martinez, Erica and Rivas, Misael “Beyond the bean: Analyzing diversified farming, food security, dietary diversity, and gender in Nicaragua?s smallholders coffee cooperatives” Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems , v.47 , 2023. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21683565.2023.2171172
Bacon, Christopher M. and Kelley, Lisa C. and Stewart, Iris T. “Toward a feminist political ecology of household food and water security during drought in northern Nicaragua” Ecology and Society , v.27 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.5751/es-12716-270116 Citation Details
Research team members: Chris Bacon, Bill Sundstrom, and Maria Eugenia Flores Gomez
Student researchers: Ava Gleicher, Kylie Griggs, Brooke Rose, and Paola Felix.
The anchor funding for this project is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (BCS 2117976). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.