Friend,

On Saturday morning I discovered this and what a coincidence (or not!). Something happened in Rome that I don’t want us to scroll past. In December, the United Nations declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer — a full year, designated by the UN General Assembly, to recognize the women who have always held up agriculture and to push the world to close the gaps we live inside every day.

123 countries co-signed it. The FAO, the WFP, IFAD — the whole Rome alphabet — is behind it. Whole Foods listed women in agriculture as a top-10 food trend. Conferences are happening. Podcasts are launching. Brands are running campaigns with beautiful photographs of women in fields.

It made me sit down and I felt that in my chest. Part of me is frustrated. An "International Year" shouldn't be the mechanism by which we discover that women produce 60–80% of food in developing countries and control far less than that in terms of land ownership, financing, and decision-making power. That data has existed for decades.

But another part of me — the part that grew up making dust and not eating it — recognizes something important: a spotlight, even a late one, is still a spotlight. And you and I are standing in it right now.

The question isn't whether the recognition is overdue. It is. The question is: what do we build with the moment we've been given? For so many, this is the first time the work has been named out loud on a global stage. And I want to celebrate it. But I also want to be honest with you about what a designation is, and what it isn’t.

What the spotlight revealed

The numbers FAO put forward are not gentle. In 2021, agrifood systems employed 40 percent of the world’s working women. Yet when women manage farms the same size as men, the gap in land productivity is 24 percent — how much value each acre produces. That is two equal plots, side by side, and the woman's yields nearly a quarter less — not because of how women farm, but because of what is denied: land rights, financing, technology, training, a seat in the room where decisions get made. Women in agricultural wage work still earn 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.

And here is the line I keep coming back to. FAO estimates that closing the gap between men and women in agriculture could raise global GDP by one trillion dollars and lift 45 million people out of food insecurity. Women are not a charity case the world is being kind to. Women are the most under-invested engine in the entire food system.

Why a year is not the finish line

A designation is a beginning. It is the world clearing its throat. The danger of a special year is that it can become a hashtag — a month of panels, a wave of pretty graphics, and then the spotlight moves on while the 24 percent stays exactly where it was.

FAO’s own leaders said the quiet part plainly: the goal is to move from sharing stories to practical work — policies, investment, research, partnerships — and the needs of women farmers must outlast 2026. A year of attention only matters if it leaves behind something that doesn’t expire in December.

So what do we do with it?

This is where you and I come in. We don’t have to coordinate the United Nations (although I have reached out to see how we could overlap and create impact together). We have to be faithful with the ground in front of us — and where we are planted, we have real reach.

—  Name a woman out loud this year — mentor her, fund her, hand her the mic, put her name forward for the role.

—  Use whatever room you’re already in. A budget line, a hiring decision, a grower meeting, a board agenda — that is where the trillion dollars actually moves.

—  Tell the truth about the gaps where you work — you can’t close what no one will name.

The world gave us a year. Let’s give it back something permanent. Not because we needed permission to matter, but because the spotlight is finally pointed in the right direction — and we get to decide what it lands on.

The door is open right now in a way it won't always be. Media desks are looking for real voices, not institutional ones. Grants and fellowships are moving (look up the AWARD 2026 Leadership Program for African women in agricultural sciences). Retailers and brands are building campaigns around women in ag and need authentic partners, not ambassadors.

With you in the growing, with love,

Christina

P.S. Forward this to a woman in agriculture and tell her the world is finally using the words she earned. Where she is planted still matters, and she is allowed to bloom there.

Source: FAO, “FAO launches International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026” (Dec. 2025); statistics from FAO’s The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems and The Unjust Climate

herloom  •  bloom where you are planted