Food

Oxfam is working towards a world where everyone has enough to eat and where women especially have the opportunity to earn a decent living.


Growing, eating and earning

760, 000 people grew more, ate more, and earned more thanks to the seeds, tools, fertiliser and animals we provided in 2010/11.

Good goods

270,000 more people, especially women, formed co-ops, got their goods to market, learned business skills, and made a profit with Oxfam's support.

The issue

Life is tough for millions of poor food producers, but the current economic crisis is hitting them particularly hard. Any fall in demand or rise in prices can mean the difference between eating every day or going hungry.

And it's women that are worst affected. Many women work the land or are employed in informal, casual work, so when things go wrong, they're the first to lose their jobs and go without when household budgets shrink.

What we're doing

Support for poor communities during this economic crisis includes helping farmers get a fair price for their produce, campaigning against global trade rules that keep people in poverty, and supporting women's labour rights.

Women especially have the potential to lead the way in building businesses and tapping into local and global markets to increase their earning power.

We have also been pushing for the introduction of a Robin Hood Tax - a new 0.05% tax on banks directed to tackling poverty worldwide. However, our most ambitious campaign to date is GROW - a global campaign to fix the world's broken food system.

The GROW campaign


The GROW campaign aims to transform the food system by establishing sustainable - and environmentally sound - agricultural production that will be able to feed a world population of 9 billion by 2050.

It also aims to address the huge inequalities that exist in the food system. Currently the world produces more food than we need, but nearly 1 billion people go without. And smallholder farmers, who comprise the majority of food producers, are denied the resources they need to thrive - water, land, technology and investment.

It's a campaign that seeks to bring about a shift in global government attitudes to food trade and finance. It focuses on small-scale farming in developing countries, and changing attitudes to the world's scarce resources for a fairer future.

You may also be interested in:

GROW

Join GROWJoin GROW

The campaign to make sure everyone always has enough to eat

Policy & Practice

More about food and livelihoodsMore about food and livelihoods

on our Policy & Practice website

Other issues we work on