WOMEN LAND RIGHTS AND FOOD SECURITY

Food security is a topical issue discussed all over the world and it’s a phenomenon experienced especially in the less developed countries. Food security is at the forefront especially with the advent of climate variability and change which is affecting food production and distribution. Women especially their rural counterparts are the majority producers of food and cannot continue to do so, if they do not have access to land which is a strategic resource for agriculture. Culturally most women cannot be owners of land, but are mostly considered the owners of the crops. With limited access to land the food cultivated cannot meet the increasing demand especially from the urban areas causing food insecurity. The qualitative approach was used in collecting data through content analysis of books written from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century on Cameroon land property law, how land can be and is acquired by both male and female especially culturally and importance of land to women who are main producers of agricultural food crops and the phenomenon of food security. Results show that women farmers are facing increasingly insecure access to land and with the scarcity of land men have withdraw land rights that women previously held. Alternatively most rural women farmers are developing many different avenues to access land.