Rural food shops boost diets and economies

Despite producing much of the food we consume, rural people often struggle to access sufficient nutritious food themselves. Food insecurity is more prevalent in rural areas than in cities, while the cost of a nutritious diet remains out of reach for many.

But with support from IFAD-funded projects, rural women are working hard to change this. Let’s celebrate the women around the world whose small rural businesses are boosting their economies while making high-quality food available to their communities.

In Tonga, a lack of access to nutritious foods contributes to high rates of non-communicable diseases like diabetes and obesity, which are collectively responsible for 84.5 per cent of deaths.

But Sivilaise, a community leader in Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island, is working to reverse this trend. She is part of a women’s gardening collective that received training, tools and seeds from the IFAD-funded TRIP-II project to produce fresh vegetables. After a devastating volcanic eruption in 2022, the group received support from PIRAS, an initiative of IFAD and the Australian Government, to restart their agricultural activities.

Sivilaise’s group has since gone from strength to strength. They grow enough to feed their families and produce a surplus, which Sivilaise sells from a small stand in front of her house. In this way, the group members earn a steady income while supplying local families with nutritious produce.

For many years, Rose and her husband laboured to support their four children in Uganda. While Rose’s husband worked as a fisher, she spread mukene fish on the ground to dry it in the sun, then sold it for less than a dollar per kilogram. She barely made ends meet.

But with training and drying racks from the IFAD-funded NOPP initiative, Rose improved the quality and safety of her dried fish, more than doubling her earnings.

The boost in income paid for her children’s school fees and enabled her to set up a vegetable shop. Today, Rose runs a flourishing micro-business that provides her community with fresh vegetables and protein-packed fish – crucial components of a nourishing diet.

Wansa’s business in Tunisia began with a window cut into the fence of her home, through which she sold homemade biscuits to neighbourhood children. As her sales grew, she built a small shop in her front garden, stocked with a few basic goods.

In 2024, her business got a critical boost from IESS, which supports vulnerable women in generating sustainable livelihoods. The initiative is financed by IFAD, the Adaptation Fund and the Government of Tunisia.

IESS provided Wansa with US$4,300 of equipment for her grocery store: a counter, shelving, a heated display case and a refrigerator. She has since expanded her food offerings, introducing healthy traditional breads and fresh sandwiches. She sells the same yoghurts that children receive at the local kindergarten, also supported by IESS.

Wansa dreams of setting up a women’s group so that she and her neighbours can support each other’s businesses. “You gave me wings, and I used them to fly,” she says. “And if I find more wings, I’ll fly even farther.”

Carolyn, a small-scale farmer in Nigeria’s Benue State, was inspired to learn about the nutritional benefits of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes from the IFAD-funded VCDP. While white-fleshed sweet potatoes are widely enjoyed in Nigeria, the orange variety is just as tasty – and also rich in vitamin A, a nutrient critical to children’s diets as its absence is a leading cause of childhood blindness.

Carolyn began growing orange-fleshed sweet potatoes and visiting schools and churches to urge others to join her. Today, she produces a range of sweet potato products that she supplies to wholesalers. She also makes sure her community can benefit, selling sweet potato snacks, garri, bread and even drinks from her village shop.

Neneide is a small-scale farmer who leads Cooperxique, a farming cooperative in north-eastern Brazil that promotes eco-friendly agriculture. She believes that nutritious, ethically produced food should be accessible to everyone, not just people in large cities.

Under Neneide’s leadership, Cooperxique organizes agroecological fairs in small municipalities across the region. In partnership with FO4LA, it has invested in equipment to process and preserve fruit, along with developing an official brand for high-quality nutritious foods.

“We put people’s lives first and then what we can gain financially, respecting the environment, people and nature,” Neneide says.

Across the world, entrepreneurial women are creating new ways for rural families to access and consume nutritious food. They are proving that an investment in rural women’s businesses is an investment in the wellbeing of entire communities.