Tracking the relationship between gender, migration, and family farming

Worldwide, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain family farms. Climate change, land degradation, low returns on agricultural work, and shifting aspirations of younger household members, among other factors, are encouraging rural dwellers to diversify their livelihood activities. In many contexts, this includes the migration of one or more household members to secure additional income or follow other pursuits.

Migration trends are highly gendered. In many contexts, it is young men who leave their household, either temporarily for a few weeks or months at a time, or permanently. This can lead to important changes in how agricultural and other tasks are organized among household members who remain on the farm, and the relationship that migrant maintains with them.

Despite the increasing importance of rural outmigration around the world, little is known about these impacts, and about how migration affects smallholder production systems more generally.