**6.1 Women as subsistence food crop farmers**

As confirmed by the study, subsistence agriculture remains a major source of employment and economic activity for the population of the North West Region especially women. According to field evidence, an overwhelming majority of rural women in the region are farmers even though there are some women who diversify their income earning opportunities by combining subsistence agriculture with informal business activities as a livelihood option. The dearth of industrial activity in the region


*Taking Stock of Local Land Rush and Their Development Benefits for Women Farmers… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108939*

## **Table 1.**

*Demographic characteristics of women in the study area.*

makes agriculture and self-employment predominant economic activities particularly for the rural population, women and the poor. In the region and the country in general, women provide the backbone to the agricultural sector as a greater majority of economically active female labour force is employed in agriculture (**Table 1**).

While most of the women who engaged in the study (46.6%) are between 41 and 50 years old, it was observed that close to three quarters (70.8%) of the women have only primary education. This confirms the predominance of women in the agricultural sector that requires little or no education and any specialized skills for employment in the sector in general and the subsistence food crop sector in particular. Meanwhile, about two thirds (63.9%) of the study population are married suggesting that this population are likely to have use rights to land through their spouses.

Women in Cameroon can be linked with various socio-economic roles, which cut across a wide range of activities including farming, trading and working in paid labour force. They make up about 38.2% of the total labour force in the country and are a significant part of the labour force in the agricultural sector playing indispensable roles in the production, processing, and marketing of food crops [6, 35, 36]. Approximately 83% of economically active female labour force is employed in agriculture. Extensive evidence observes that women in rural areas make up a majority of


## **Table 2.**

*Distribution of women by crops cultivated.*

the active labour force in the food crop sector producing about 90% of all food crops in the country. Women grow food to feed the family, making subsistence food production one of the major agricultural activities of women [32, 37–39].

As shown on **Table 2**, women are responsible for the cultivation of food crops; as such, in the most part, food crop production is principally an activity of (rural) women, who combine the production, processing and marketing of food crops. They produce, process and market food crops such as vegetables, maize, beans, cassava, coco-yams, and irish-potatoes. As food crop producers, women continue to play a crucial role in ensuring family survival and safeguarding national food security. Women from urban centres also act as main food crop distributors, commonly referred to as 'buyam sellams', ensuring that food produced in rural areas are transported to urban towns and cities [4, 6, 14]. As buyam sellams, women are able to guarantee the availability of food to urban centres.

Despite women's predominant role in the agricultural sector as food crop producers, they have limited access to and control over production resources. The limitation of accessing and controlling production resources poses a significant difficulty not only for their productivity but for their ability to meet their family basic food needs. For example, women's ownership and control over land, labour and capital is very limited. Women lack ownership and inheritance rights to land, but maybe able to acquire use rights to cultivable land through male relatives. Consequently, with small landholdings comes the challenge of raising agricultural productivity for subsistence and generating surplus for the market.
