Meeting dietary health objectives through farming: A feminist review of biofortification and potential for genome editing in sub-Saharan Africa Open Access

Since the early 2000s, micronutrient deficiencies—commonly known as “hidden hunger”—have been shown to be a major cause of several nutrition-related development challenges in children and women of reproductive age in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including night blindness, supressed immune systems, increased rates of diarrhea, long-term cognitive challenges, and general fatigue (Black et al., 2008). Such deficiencies occur when intake and absorption of vitamins and minerals are too low to sustain good health and development (Saltzman et al., 2013). According to the 2022 report on the State of Global Food Security, some 965 million people (over 57% of the region’s population) cannot afford a healthy diet that includes enough micronutrients (FAO, 2022). The gender food insecurity gap in SSA has widened—from less than 2% in 2019 to more than 4% in 2021, with 32% of women versus 28% of men either moderately or severely food insecure (Njuki, 2022). According to recent statistical data, almost half the region’s children under the age of 5 suffer from vitamin A deficiency; 60% of young mothers are deficient in iron and 25% are deficient in zinc (WHO, 2017; African Union, 2020). Suggested underlying causes include limited diversity in daily diets, increasing fuel and food costs, and loss of yields and soil fertility from climatic instability (HLPE, 2022). These causes are often exacerbated by gendered norms that constrain women’s labor and investments in food production, provision, and sales, often leaving them with less productive resources than their male counterparts. Colonial and political-economic drivers of food systems place disproportionate responsibility on women to lead domestic food production and provision in rural areas.

Since its launch in 2006, African Green Revolution (A4GR) investments have focused on soil fertility (through chemical fertilizers), improved seeds (hybrid and genetically modified seeds), market liberalization, and policies that support these efforts (Moseley, 2017; Dowd-Uribe, 2023). And yet, gendered divisions of labor through shifting urban–rural labor migration, contract farming for large-scale cash-crop operations, and other land-use changes from A4GR investments have left rural women comparatively worse off in terms of nutrient depletion than men (Bezner Kerr et al., 2018). This imbalance indirectly impacts the health and livelihoods of small-scale men and women food producers and their families, who are vulnerable to diet-related challenges despite being targeted by investments in food-based solutions to nutrient deficiencies.

The United Nations High-level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on food security recommends that agri-food systems funding respond to ongoing challenges of global malnutrition through the production of more nutrient-rich crops (HLPE, 2020; 2022). Cost-effective strategies for decreasing national and global rates of malnutrition include the biofortification of staple crops commonly consumed in the Global South. Biofortification is defined as a technological process for increasing the nutrient content of a crop. These technological processes vary and include transgenics and conventional forms of breeding. Several studies point to positive outcomes in increasing nutrient uptake (Saltzman et al., 2013; De Moura et al., 2014; Low et al., 2017). Benefits to women who produce biofortified crops include increased cash from sales and improved nutritional outcomes for themselves and their children (Gilligan et al., 2020). However, other studies caution against the potential for unequal benefits between men and women food producers (with varying landholdings, educational background, income sources, etc.) in terms of labor divisions (Schnurr et al., 2020a), benefits from commercialization (Olaosebikan et al., 2019), and integration of biofortified crops into household dietary and farming practices (Bendana, 2019).

More recently, plant breeders working on biofortified crops perceive genome-editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-associated protein) as potentially advancing the impact of biofortification (Zheng et al., 2021). Genome editing is a technique of genetic engineering that involves the alteration of an organism’s genetic structure by adding, deleting, changing, or replacing individual nucleotides or sequences of DNA. Some technologies splice existing genetic content, without introducing new material, characterizing the new variety as genetically “similar,” thereby making a clear distinction from other genetically modified crops with new genetic material. “With the capacity to precisely edit the genomes of crop plants, nutritional content can be altered to combat malnutrition, remove toxins from staple foods like cassava, increase yields to fight hunger, and improve pest resistance, reducing the need for agrochemical inputs” (FAO, 2022, p. v.). Scientists characterize technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 to be an efficient, cost-effective technology (Ricroch, 2019; Abdallah et al., 2021; Shah et al., 2021; Nagamine and Ezura, 2022). The technology is said to require minimal infrastructure, resulting in low production costs (compared to genetic modification, for example), and the precision of in situ genome alteration facilitates the integration of novel traits in crop varieties without adding external genetic material.

However, regional application of these technologies varies in their efficiency and cost-effectiveness according to the regulatory structures and accessibility of the technology (Glover et al., 2020; Rock et al., 2023). Characterizing genome-editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 as precise considers the technological application in isolation from other methods used for breeding and genome editing. Commonly combined methods could either include traces of external genetic material or additional tools that increase the risk of human error (Rock et al., 2023). The types of investments (including public–private partnerships) and the mechanisms that underpin crop breeding and crop dissemination (including patenting processes) factor into the cost-effectiveness and, ultimately, the varying beneficiaries of biofortification through the control and access of the technology’s benefits.

Given the potential for genome-editing technologies to be used for biofortification, this review article examines how this technological innovation might impact men and women food producers differently and how certain processes within biofortification projects could foster more equitable benefits in food-system investments than others. First, the article presents an overview of varying perspectives of nutritional and dietary health that shape development investments globally, which are channeled through agri-food system investments in the SSA region. It then examines how biofortification is integrated into cropping systems through an analysis of case studies of biofortified crops and their implications for gendered livelihoods. A gendered analysis of trait and crop selection, labor divisions in production, and commercialization is presented across three context-specific cases: Quality Protein Maize (QPM) in Ethiopia, biofortified banana in Uganda, and orange sweet potato in Tanzania. The article concludes by considering how applying feminist agroecological approaches to food systems could serve to broaden and contextualize dietary health beyond a narrow focus on nutrient uptake.

The case studies presented in this article situate context-specific attempts at “improving” global responses to malnutrition through biofortification and strategies for nutrient uptake through food sources more broadly. However, recent experiences with implementing these “improvements” reveal ongoing, often gendered, inequities. How crops and crop traits are selected and bred, tested and integrated into existing farming systems, and the beneficial impacts of these new crops on economic gains for producers are experienced differently, depending on several intersectional factors, including marital status, land holdings, age, and more. More complex considerations of underlying causes and responses to global malnutrition open possibilities for innovations that include diverse experiences and approaches to food and nutrition security. In this effort, feminist agroecology puts forward a broader framing of food, farming, and nutrition that considers addressing harmful, context-specific gender norms while also supporting greater autonomy over food produced by small-scale farmers. Exploring investments in genome-editing technologies requires similar considerations around how the technology is prepared, designed, and utilized and the implications of large-scale investments on existing cropping systems situated in different landscapes and cultural contexts.

There are currently 15 biofortified crops that have either been tested or released and consumed in SSA. Many, however, have limited evidence to analyze the on-farm efficacy and nutritional impacts of production, consumption, and marketization. The three biofortified crops highlighted in the case studies here—biofortified banana, QPM, and orange sweet potato—have all been supported by long-term research and development investments, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and bilateral development agencies, such as Global Affairs Canada and UK AID.

A number of different processes involved in biofortification were considered in the selection of each case study. Selection considered the availability of sex-disaggregated data and whether data collection involved direct engagement with women farmers. For example, for QPM in Ethiopia, studies examined the impact of the new maize variety on food processing and preparation, activities largely led by women. Regarding biofortified banana in Uganda, studies considered gendered differences in on-farm tasks, labor divisions, and farmer preferences. For orange sweet potato in Tanzania, studies examined targeted biofortied sweet potato promotional campaigns and training activities geared toward women cultivators and opportunities for commercialization and post-harvest activities.

The studies and evaluations reviewed formed the basis of the selection and structure of the case studies: crop and trait preferences with regard to QPM in Ethiopia, gendered labor divisions in the production of biofortified banana in Uganda, and commercialization of sweet potato in Tanzania. There is limited sex-disaggregated data available in the other areas of biofortification assessments in particular contexts, such as long-term health impacts of biofortified crops, direct and indirect environmental impacts, post-harvest storage and distribution, lab and on-farm breeding activities, and quality control in commercialization and nutrient-enhancement processes. Future studies that examine biofortification involving genome editing require further attention to the differing impacts on men and women engaged in production, provision, and sales of biofortified crops.

Documents reviewed in the case studies include project evaluations (O’Brien et al., 2016), studies on farmer preferences (Schnurr et al., 2020b), gendered labor assessments (Addison and Schnurr, 2015), farmer-led decision-making, perceptions of the crops’ economic and socio-cultural value (Gilligan et al., 2020; Rao, 2020), and the impact of markets on farmer livelihoods (,Tarjem et al., 2022). A focus on the relations between scientific processes and farm-based experiences demonstrates how scientific knowledge does not equally benefit everyone but, rather, often depends on unequal social relations with institutions and service providers (Schiebinger, 1999; Harding, 2008). The aim here is to unpack the epistemological and ontological differences that underpin varying food-system approaches to address malnutrition and the financial and development networks supporting them. Interpretations and framings of dietary and nutritional health by investors, scientists, and plant breeders either reinforce technological solutions or challenge them and impact women and men food producers in the region. Tarjem et al. (2022, p. 4), for example, conceive market-oriented breeding as “an ongoing, relational performance consisting of intra-acting discourses, practices and human and non-human actors,” where, in the context of biofortification, economic and health outcomes are equally important and are accompanied by a range of gendered considerations.

Furthermore, analysis of these case studies highlights the socio-economic impacts of “nutritionism” in agricultural development projects promoting biofortification. An emphasis on nutrient uptake through breeding and cultivating biofortified crops for market-driven consumption perpetuates a “single nutrient reductionism,” whereby definitive claims are made about the health effects of particular nutrients, regardless of the quality of the food or the dietary pattern in which these nutrients are embedded (Scrinis, 2016, p. 20). This nutritionist ideology underpins biofortification investments, disregards the gendered dynamics of growing, selling, and preparing food locally, and often obscures how biofortified crops potentially reduce opportunities for diversifying food production.

Complementary to this nutritionist emphasis, examples of feminist agroecological farming present opportunities to consider dietary health as intrinsically linked to environmental and political-economic drivers of food-system changes (Bellwood-Howard and Ripoll, 2020). Considerations on seed sourcing, selection and breeding, quantities and types of inputs required, and more broadly, the socio-economic factors influencing nutritional health are central to agroecology practices. From a feminist perspective, it is imperative to recognize and address the inequities embedded in food-system labor and investments, as well as the differentiated roles diverse men and women play in food systems, where decision-making roles, access and control of processes around breeding, production and post-harvest crop sales and food provision are all considered.

The article focuses on three particular areas of the biofortification practices: trait and crop selection, labor, and commercialization. In doing so, the review examines biofortification from a systems-level, beyond quantifiable outcomes, and indicators that narrowly demonstrate proof of technological impact. A gendered analysis of biofortification exposes inequitable design elements within projects promoting biofortification that counteract the objectives of reaching marginalized populations through nutrient-rich food production. Review of these crops is contrasted with experiences of agroecological practices and approaches to dietary health to analyze the various factors contributing to potentially long-term, nutrient-rich dietary health. The discussion then concludes by cautioning proponents of genome-editing technologies to consider broader framings of nutritional health (as shown through feminist agroecology) that better align with a more demand-driven technological design, farmer-led decision-making, and crop integration processes.

Critical nutrition scholars make the distinction between mainstream nutritional health narratives and critical approaches to dietary health that refract differences between agricultural development approaches to nutrition and more holistic framings of food and farming (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2013; Nichols et al., 2021). There are clear overlaps across the mainstream and critical approaches to nutrition that consider food justice, equity, gender relations, and colonial contexts. However, highlighting the distinct differences between these two framings demonstrates the range of ontological engagements that associate farming with dietary health and how a narrowed interpretation of dietary health as nutritional health guides large-scale global investments such as biofortification. In dominant narratives, malnutrition refers to deficiencies in nutrient uptake or excesses in caloric intake, an imbalance of essential nutrients or impaired nutrient utilization from immune suppression (WHO, 2023). The double burden of malnutrition consists of undernutrition or an inadequate intake of protein, calories, or micronutrients on one side and the threat of obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases on the other (WHO, 2023). While micronutrient deficiencies occur in different contexts of malnutrition, limited nutrient access is often the most common problem in rural farming communities in SSA (Moseley and Ouedraogo, 2022). Underlying drivers of undernutrition specific to the region include inefficiencies in food production and market activity, lack of information or knowledge on nutritional health in farming communities, low quality and quantity of farm inputs, poor land use and infrastructure, and nutrient deficiencies from dependence on high caloric, low nutrient foods (FAO et al., 2021). Micronutrient deficiencies are attributed to low diversity in diets and farming systems and inadequate uptake of nutrients due to infection or illness (Burchi et al., 2011). However, these causes are strongly embedded in historical colonial experiences of labor exploitation and land-use changes that gradually reduced crop and dietary diversity through large-scale monocropping, depleted soil fertility through chemical fertilizer use, and a subsequent loss of agrobiodiversity and local knowledge (Nott, 2019).

Recognizing that social norms are fluid and relational based on life-cycle and structural changes, such as institutional and local economic activities in rural settings, Hillenbrand and Miruka (2019) identified gender norms that can interact with opportunity structures to prevent women from advancing in the agricultural sector. These include farmer skills, capacities and confidence, access and control over inputs, land and productive resources, and norms of productive and reproductive work. Common food-based and non-food-based nutrition interventions such as supplementation campaigns, homestead vegetable gardens, and fortification and biofortification strategies rely on these gendered social norms (Ruel et al., 2018). These interventions assume that women will actively lead and participate in project activities as part of their care labor (Burchi et al., 2011; Beuchelt and Badstue, 2013). For example, supplementation campaigns are targeted at young and lactating mothers. These campaigns directly contributed to reducing population-level mortality rates by 20% in the SSA region and continue to target vulnerable populations as a preventative measure to maintain minimal uptake of three main nutrients: iron, vitamin A, and zinc (Janmohamed et al., 2017). However, broader socio-economic contributions to micronutrient deficiencies remain under-recognized, and therefore interventions directed at nutrient-uptake dominate investments.

Increasing vegetable production and efforts to diversify food intake centered on “nutrition-sensitive agriculture” (Malapit et al., 2021) indirectly targeted women’s contribution to subsistence farming and household food production. This dependence on gendered social norms in many SSA regions factored into how rural residents adopted these new crops and technologies and guided changes in cropping systems, processes in meal preparations, and land use and access (Maestre et al., 2014; Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019; Rao, 2020). Biofortification strategies evolved out of these ongoing initiatives to reach the most remote areas, including populations dependent on resource-poor subsistence farming (African Union, 2020).

The technological aspects of biofortification include three key project elements: “a range of technologies designed to alter the nutrient levels in a selected crop; a development intervention combining goals of improved public health and poverty alleviation; and an idea linking agriculture, nutrition and health in new ways” (Brooks and Johnson-Beebout, 2012, p. 86). Framing the technology as a project enables examination of the processes involved in integrating biofortified crops into the everyday lives of food producers. This framing enables the analysis of variables (such as increased income or positive health outcomes) that either demonstrate successful uptake of the technology or limitations to integrating the technology into existing cropping systems. For example, the success of biofortification as a public health intervention relies on a large share of households substituting conventional varieties of the low-nutrient staple food crop for the biofortified nutrient-dense variety (Gilligan et al., 2020, p. 1). Taking into account how these substitutions are facilitated through interventions then highlights these various links between agriculture, nutrition, and health through biofortification.

Analysis of processes involved in biofortification projects highlights varying factors that result in unequal benefits between men and women. Decisions around what traits are modified and by whom, who cultivates the crops, and how it is consumed, sold, and processed shape the overall population-level uptake into cropping systems and daily diets (Tanumihardjo et al., 2017). For example, integration of participatory plant breeding methods in Uganda that included differentiated preferences between men and women led to a greater diffusion of particular varieties of biofortified sweet potato (Polar et al., 2022). At the same time, studies in trait preferences in bananas in Uganda suggested that women producers were more interested in the economic potential than nutritional value, countering assumptions that women are more concerned with the latter (Schnurr et al., 2020a; 2020b). Nutritional quality has not played an important role in most breeding programs in the past and thus remains undervalued in trait selection (Christinck and Weltzien, 2013). Efforts toward gender-responsive breeding consider preferences that directly benefit women beyond production, and that include post-harvest benefits—for example, developing value-added products processed by women such as flour, baked or dried products, or ready-made meals (Teeken et al., 2018; Polar et al., 2022). The scale at which new crops are cultivated shapes labor needs that often depend on unpaid care labor or contracted labor. Thus, considerations of how biofortified crops are introduced, cultivated, and developed commercially offer insight into how men and women may experience present and future biofortification projects differently.

Nutritional health narratives, including those driving biofortification, are in part shaped by “colonial histories that established economic and agricultural and health development rooted in Eurocentric knowledge systems” (Nichols et al., 2021, p. 639). These narratives often overlook community-based perceptions, assessments of dietary health, and measurable long-term outcomes.

These narrowly defined framings of both the challenges and the solutions to nutritional deficiencies are often described as nutritionism, a “reductive focus on particular nutrients, food components, or biomarkers, abstracted out of the context of foods, diets and bodily processes. Removed from their broader cultural and ecological ambits, they come to represent the definitive truth about the relationship between food and bodily health” (Scrinis, 2008, p. 40; Patel et al., 2014). An interventionist emphasis on nutrient uptake tends to depend on rural women within diverse contexts universally adopting new staple crop varieties into their food production, provision, and sales systems. It assumes a fixed gender dynamic within agriculture that undervalues women food producers as active agents making strategic choices about their livelihoods (Kawarazuka et al., 2022).

Critical approaches to nutrition consider the political economic factors that shape food access and the lived experiences of vulnerable individuals and populations as both a starting point for responses and as evidence for effectiveness. Complementary to nutritionsim, broader critiques of nutritional science analyze: (1) the simplification of complex science to increase the persuasiveness of dietary guidance; (2) superficial and honorific references to science to justify cultural or ideological views about food and health; and (3) the presumption that nutrition is the primary value of food (Mayes and Thompson, 2015, p. 587). Additionally, a feminist analytical approach highlights the interconnectedness between dietary health, individual and collective relations to land (Kawarazuka et al., 2022), the availability, quality, quantity, and control over usage of food technologies (Lee, 2018), and productive and reproductive care labor to support their food access (Stevano et al., 2019; Farhall and Rickards, 2021; Vercillo et al., 2023). Recognizing the underlying limitations of objective scientific knowledge systems, critical nutrition studies emphasize the situated knowledge within specific processes in food systems such as breeding (including genome editing), production, food provision, and commercialization.

Alongside this critical approach to nutrition, agroecology considers the ecology and agronomy of food production, and the social system in which farmers work. Agroecology is considered a practice, a movement, and a science (Nicholls and Altieri, 2018; Zaremba et al., 2021). It puts relatively little emphasis on laboratory and experiment-station research relative to the process of on-farm experimentation where farmers play a central role within the research process (Nicholls and Altieri, 2018). It prioritizes diversity in food production, preparation, and consumption (HLPE, 2019). “Although agroecology can be, like genome editing, richly experimental and hypothesis-driven in nature, it tends to be place-based, culturally grounded, and immersed in (messy) everyday life” (Montenegro de Wit, 2022, p. 737). Agroecology aims to develop knowledge, techniques, and relations of production and consumption that redefine the relationships between men, women, and nature in a socially and ecologically sustainable way (Hillenkamp and Nobre, 2021, p. 212). Agroecology moves beyond scientific instrumentalism toward a deeper understanding of health as the inter-relations between individuals, communities, the environment, and food production. The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, for example, pursues food systems built upon 10 agroecology principles: diversity, co-creation and sharing of knowledge, synergies, efficiency, recycling, resilience, human and social values, culture and food, responsible governance, and circular and solidarity economy (AFSA, 2022). These principles lay the foundation for systems-level responses to dietary health beyond nutritionism and market-driven solutions.

Dominant framings of nutritional health tend to universalize women’s experiences, whereas a feminist understanding attends more carefully to their diversity (Farhall and Rickards, 2021). A feminist analysis of nutrition and agricultural interventions emphasizes the gendered differences in access and control over productive resources, the reproductive labor burdens that exacerbate economic inequities, and the degree to which interventions reinforce or hinder ownership and autonomy over livelihood choices. Feminist approaches to agricultural development consider grassroots movement building that responds to intersecting relations of marginalization such as disability, class, ethnic identity, sexuality, race, citizenship, and others in context-specific settings. In the context of rural, small-scale farming in SSA countries, feminist agroecology recenters the diverse roles in family and community structures that mediate both men’s and women’s opportunities to access food and the means of its production. “Rather than flattening women’s experience in food systems as one of unilateral victimhood and exploitation, or positioning women as environmental saviors, an intersectional analysis within feminist agroecology recognizes that their experiences are complex, dynamic, heterogenous, and shifting” (Zaremba, 2021, p. 14). This intersectional consideration is central to feminist agroecology, in that it situates farming practices within broader socio-economic and cultural drivers of inequality. A feminist perspective to agroecology, then, emphasizes three main structural conditions to inequities in food systems: power dynamics in valuing knowledge systems and lived experiences, land tenure and access, and unpaid, underpaid, or undervalued labor (Ume et al., 2023). As Seibert et al. (2019, p. 46) suggest, “from a feminist perspective, agroecology is and must be a political proposal that recognizes and promotes the historical and social practices of women, from the domestication of agriculture and the production of healthy and quality food to the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.”

Agroecology emphasizes a greater localization of strategies that maintain farmers’ autonomy over their role in local food systems (from seed selection and sourcing, cultivation, harvesting, and sales and provision). In Ethiopia, a study examining enset farmers’ transition to agroecological practices demonstrated an increased diversity of agricultural practices (both in livestock and crops) and an increase in market access through fodder production (Lucantoni and Domarle, 2023). A meta-review study showed 78% of those who practiced some form of agroecology reported positive food and nutrition security outcomes (Bezner Kerr et al., 2021). These examples suggest that agroecology offers alternatives to technologically focused nutritional interventions.

Although there is growing evidence around increased benefits for women who practice agroecological approaches, an increase in labor investments (in organic fertilizer production, for example) or additional inputs into soil and water conservation could indirectly increase care burdens for women food producers (Ume et al., 2023). At the same time, studies demonstrate that the adoption of agroecological farming practices by peasant and indigenous women has united local communities through labor-sharing and learning opportunities for rural women farmers (Santoso et al., 2021; Ume et al., 2023). For example, recent evidence from women farmers practicing agroecological methods in Malawi showed greater autonomy and decision-making control over land use and crop selection, as well as increased participation in other political and socio-economic activities in their community (Sachs and Patel-Campillo, 2014; Bezner Kerr et al., 2019; Espinal et al., 2021; Zaremba et al., 2021; Oliver et al., 2022). Agroecology, therefore, offers a low investment intervention that addresses the underlying socio-economic and gendered drivers of malnutrition.

Alongside the varying interpretations of nutrition, mechanisms for funding interventions also shape food systems in terms of production, provision, and sales. Research and dissemination of biofortified crops is supported by private foundations and bilateral development agencies associated with the Green Revolution for Africa and “nutrition for growth” initiatives. Driven by public–private partnerships, these agendas align with future investments into developing gene-edited crops for nutritional health. Major donors, including philanthropic foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), as well as bilateral donors such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Global Affairs Canada, the Netherlands Development Corporation, and the German Agency for Development Corporation prioritize the production, processing, and selling of nutrient-rich fortified food (fortified either via crop production or in processing) for addressing food insecurity at “scale.” The Global Nutrition Summit in 2021 confirmed a USD $27 billion investment by the governments of the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Japan aimed at addressing global malnutrition (O’Leary, 2021), with at least USD $1 billion committed by the BMGF. As the largest donor to the Green Revolution for Africa, BMGF previously allocated nearly USD $40 million to support the biofortification of sweet potato, rice, and cassava across Africa (Thompson, 2014). Investment priorities include equitable consumption of safe, affordable diets, maternal and child nutrition, and innovations in supplementation programs. The BMGF also supports complementary areas such as nutrient-rich crop production and plant science research that respond to micronutrient deficiencies.

Biofortification investments dominate agricultural funding in targeted African countries and are often multimillion-dollar projects that are guided by both private and pubic interests. In Tanzania, for example, biofortified sweet potato projects funded by BMGF and USAID totaled over USD $70 million over a 5-year period between 2011 and 2016 (Rao, 2020). These projects ranged in scope and priority but were all primarily focused on integrating biofortified crops into cropping and market systems through schools, market spaces, commercialization of seeds, and public awareness campaigns.

Funding for CRISPR-Cas9 technologies by both government agencies and philanthropic foundations follow slightly different aims, where government agencies fund research and development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a biotechnology, exploring its scientific potential and application (Ortiz et al., 2022, p. 453). Philanthropic organizations, on the other hand, tend to focus more on co-funding these technologies with organziations, or research institutes, with a specific economic development goal. This raises questions about the role of philanthropy in influencing predominantly publicly funded research trajectories and its potential contribution to the privatization of rewards from public investments (Ortiz et al., 2022).

Although private U.S. donors and government agencies recently increased support in addressing global gender inequality through feminist assistance and funding policies (Hessini, 2020), these operate within existing mechanisms and structures that do not necessarily address underlying structural inequities that restrict access to productive resources for women food producers (Vercillo et al., 2023). A growing movement in feminist funding seeks to disrupt current financial channels and aims to support women’s rights organizations who are leading efforts toward equitable transformation of policies and institutional and legal structures (Hessini, 2020; Rao and Delorme, 2024). Funds such as the Equality Fund, Mama Cash, or Frida Fund all seek to offer core, untied funds to civil society organizations to support “transformative philanthropy as active and reciprocal, a feminist act of connection and solidarity that builds shared power and relationships” (Equality Fund, 2022). These funds provide untied support to strengthen long-term programmatic and organizational autonomy in efforts to address intersecting challenges around dietary health, economic instability, and governing structures that expose gender inequality in various ways (Equality Fund, 2022).

Similarly, the Agroecology Fund supports social movements and civil society organizations in their policy advocacy at local, national, and international levels. This fund targets specific initiatives that align with the goals of organizations who support farmers’ interests and rights and address the gendered inequities in food systems. However, funding is limited at the global level. In a recent study of European Union (EU) investments through the Green Climate Fund directed toward Rome-based agencies, projects partially supporting agroecology represented only 2.7% of the EU funds channeled through Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and World Food Programme (WFP) between 2016 and 2018. In contrast, 79.8% of the EU funds channeled through the FAO, IFAD, and WFP and 79.3% of the Green Climate Fund support projects with conventional agriculture and/or efficiency-oriented approaches (such as sustainable intensification) (Moeller, 2020). These funding mechanisms and sources demonstrate a significantly different scale of support between agroecology and programs focused on addressing malnutrition within agricultural development. These trends risk continuing a system whereby “financial investments, human resources, training and education go materially to stop-gap solutions while structural malaise remains untreated” (Montenegro de Wit, 2022, p. 741).

The administration of investments shapes the design of nutritional interventions. Large-scale investments into technological interventions such as biofortification genome editing could potentially limit the engagement with the socio-economic or gendered implications of dietary health challenges. Without explicitly investing in consultations with food producers targeted by the biofortification projects, implementation of the genome-editing technologies risks perpetuating rather than challenging the inequities within areas of food systems such as crop and trait selection in breeding, labor investments, and commercialization strategies. Further attention to aspects of the biofortification project, and food-based responses to nutrient deficiency, informs discussions of future investments into genome-editing technologies. Applying the main elements of feminist agroecology as points of analysis—such as local and indigenous knowledge and experience, land access and ownership, and unpaid, underpaid gendered labor in the case studies found below—demonstrates the structural inequities embedded in biofortification interventions. More specifically, a closer look at case studies of biofortified crops that have undergone gender analysis examines the implications for crop selection, potential changes to labor divisions, and processes of marketization for scaling nutrient access.

The earliest versions of biofortification began at the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) in Mexico in the 1970s, where researchers conducted experiments to breed maize with higher protein content, called QPM (Ekpa et al., 2019). QPM and other biofortified varieties of maize include higher quantities of the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which serve as protein building blocks and counteract leucine, in turn blocking absorption of niacin, a vitamin whose absence causes protein deficiency (Daniel and Cécile, 2007; Maqbool et al., 2021). Efforts to breed biofortified maize aligned with international priorities targeting protein deficiencies in the Global South as a leading cause of hunger and under-nutrition during the 1970s and 1980s (Semba, 2016) and later became a priority with public–private partnership investments through the African Green Revolution (Moseley, 2017; Marenya et al., 2022). In SSA, maize intake ranges from 50 g to more than 330 g per person/day and is also used for livestock feed. Maize and its products comprise 38% of daily diets (Ekpa et al., 2019). Given its major contribution to daily diets across the region, the crop is a priority candidate for biofortification strategies and potentially for genome editing for nutritional and productivity improvements.

Ethiopia—where maize, along with teff, sorghum, and wheat are staple crops—is one country where QPM is widely grown. Approximately 14% of the total land area is used for maize production. More than 9 million farmers grow maize on about 2 million ha (14% of total land area in Ethiopia) and around 88% of their production is used for food consumption (Alemu et al., 2024, p. 2). Maize is considered the least expensive grain to cultivate and purchase in Ethiopia, and 90% of production is by smallholder farmers. However, there is a gap between the actual and potential yield for farmers, which impacts their food security, reducing overall caloric intake (Abate et al., 2015).

Studies of recent QPM harvests in Ethiopia showed mixed results. There was little proof that the new varieties improved the nutritional status of families that grew them (De Groote et al., 2016). Moreover, a recent gender-based analysis of a CAD $17 million investment from Global Affairs Canada revealed that women adopted QPM less than men overall across different types of households (male-headed, female-headed, and joint-headed households) (O’Brien et al., 2016). The study revealed that women’s knowledge of QPM was significantly lower in male-headed households due to their lack of engagement with the training activities, and there was an overall lower awareness of the nutritional value and benefits of QPM over other traditional varieties. The study also demonstrated how social norms, in terms of women’s reproductive roles in society, limited them from accessing agricultural extension equitably, where men were able to coordinate their availability without considering competing care responsibilities. Since the distribution of QPM focused on household adoption, there was an assumption that a trickle-down effect would occur if men’s participation was higher than women in the trainings. Research suggested that further investment in public education of QPM’s benefits may support greater adoption. However, preferences in varieties for preparing meals, for example, QPM texture compared to other local varieties, were mentioned as potential factors influencing its adoption.

Increasing climatic variability across the East Africa region, including Ethiopia (e.g., longer dry seasons and uncertain rainfall patterns), has also seen many farmers reduce the amount of maize they grow (Aylward et al., 2015; Jilo, 2022). For QPM to benefit people nutritionally in their daily diets, the crop requires yields of up to 3 kg kept in storage, and not immediately sold on the market (O’Brien, 2016). Unanticipated climatic impacts such as increasing pests and diseases impacting store crops may then result in insufficient yields to support both subsistence use and sales of the crop. Other unforeseeable factors around food production such as labor shortages or competing inter-household interests around crop selection could also excaberate these challenges (O’Brien et al., 2016). QPM aims to support this reduction by increasing the nutritional content that requires less maize consumption overall. Recent studies showed farmers, and in particular women adopting QPM and positive health outcomes in children, with regular consumption (Jilo, 2022). However, challenges remain around increasing QPM cultivars in the SSA region, where the majority of small-scale producers continue to produce maize for household consumption, preserving traditional seed varieties, and investing less in hybrid varieties (Jilo, 2022).

Crop and trait selection for biofortification projects in SSA are largely based on the relevance of the crop to food security, the accessibility of the crop to farmers, and their overall profitability (Bentley et al., 2017; Tarjem et al., 2022). For example, crops selected for CGIAR’s biofortification program, Global Harvest Plus, were determined using data from FAO and WHO and chosen based on a quantitative analysis of staple crops consumed, preferences in markets, and national data on micronutrient deficiency (Asare-Marfo et al., 2013). The program’s expansion from 13 countries to 30 relied on this analysis. Traits where CGIAR envisions using genome editing focus on traits in particular crops include brown streak virus resistance and haploid induction in cassava; nutritional quality and digestibility in bean; striga resistance in sorghum; low phytate and high provitamin A in maize; reduced acrylamide, phytate, and polyphenol oxidase in wheat; reduced aflatoxin in groundnut; delayed flour rancidity in pearl millet; reduced glycaemic index and apomixis in rice; and heat tolerance and apomixis in potato (Tripathi et al., 2022).

Studies on trait selection show preferences differed when women and men had contrasting roles and responsibilities for various crop production or post-harvest activities (Weltzien et al., 2019). For example, studies linking women’s empowerment and food security show that the more women contribute to household decision-making and farming matters such as on crop selection, land use, and inputs purchases, the more likely the selection of crops will factor into dietary needs, and that the household will be less at risk of food insecurity (Quisumbing and Maluccio, 2003). Studies on the trait preferences between men and women tend to focus on gender roles in food and agricultural systems, where women are perceived to favor the cultural value of the variety and their cooking characteristics, whereas men appear to be more concerned with the yield quantity and overall cash value (Ngailo et al., 2016; Marimo et al., 2020). However, a study on GM banana confirms women’s economic priorities often override factors around food provision and nutritional traits (Schnurr et al., 2020a).

Tarjem (2022) highlights the potential for gender-responsive breeding processes such as the Gender + (G+) tools used with the CGIAR. In their ethnographic study, the author suggests that the G+ toolbox for crop breeding can reshape diagnostic and screening around what farmers need in terms of the social context in which they are considering certain crops and traits. For example, the G+ toolbox aims to consider the differential trait preferences between men and women and the varying decision-making and asset-based factors that shape these preferences. Gender-responsive breeding can also serve as a means for “translating complex gender dimensions in ways that adhere to the language, practices and values of crop breeders, agricultural economist, and philanthrocapitalist funders” (Tarjem, 2022, p. 14). The socio-cultural factors determining how the new crops are cultivated, by whom and for whose benefit, could raise the potential for sustained, long-term adoption if both men and women’s preferences in the decision-making around crop and trait selection were considered.

Approximately one-third of global banana production takes place in Africa. The crop plays a key role in food security by feeding more people per unit area of production than other staple crops (Wesseler and Falck-Zepeda, 2008; Kikulwe and Asindu, 2020). In Uganda, banana varieties occupy somewhere between 20% and 30% of all land under cultivation. Ugandans consume more bananas per capita than anywhere else in the world, accounting for more than 30% of the country’s total daily caloric intake (Smale and Tushemereirwe 2007; Schnurr et al., 2020b).

Given the crop’s dominance in Uganda, there have long been efforts to develop transgenic banana varieties that respond to challenges with the crop, including bacterial wilt, virus protection, and increasing nutrient content (Kozicka et al., 2021). Scientists researching the efficacy of biofortified bananas claim that consuming 30 g contributes to 50% of the estimated average nutritional requirement for children under 5 years of age and pre- and post-natal women (Paul et al., 2017).

One example is the Banana21 initiative, which, beginning in 2005, sought to develop a “banana for the twenty-first century” by biofortifying matoke, a popular varietal in Uganda, with Pro-Vitamin A (Schnurr et al., 2020b, p. 327). While increasing vitamin A content reflects nutritional priorities of the project’s funders, a question remains over whether it reflects the priorities of farmers. One study examining farmer perspectives of biofortified crops revealed that traits associated with yield and marketability (e.g., fast-growing) and disease and pest resistance (e.g., to Banana Bacterial Wilt, or to Black Sigatoka) were valued over nutritional enhancement (Schnurr et al., 2020a, p. 330). Moreover, other studies showed how trait preferences in banana varieties attributed gender roles to cooking preferences for women and beer production for men, and where men considered consumption-related traits and women prioritized production traits (Marimo et al., 2020). Other studies show both men and women acknowledging the nutritional value as important and possibly offering higher value in the market (Marenya et al., 2022). However, preferences for higher yields and marketability indirectly impact labor by potentially benefiting only those with land access and assets available to support the increase in production and potential income from sales.

An emphasis on increasing micronutrient uptake through food-based sources is shown to result in changes in labor divisions in production, provision, and sales. For banana production in Uganda, these changes result in labor increases for women who, amongst a variety of strategies for securing cash and food, produce and prepare food for their families (Albertson, 2016; Schnurr et al., 2020a). Similar studies on labor investments with biofortified banana in Uganda found that larger production operations utilized hired labor to accommodate higher yields, but labor needs in smaller-scale farms were met by women in the household, removing labor away from other care-related work or production for home consumption (Addison and Schnurr, 2015). This assessment aligns with other analyses that showed increasing yields and productivity results in increasing women’s workload (both on and off farm) with varying benefits from their labor (Gengenbach, 2020; Rao, 2020; Moseley and Oeudraogo, 2022). For example, improved rice varieties resulted in women’s labor increasing as wage-laborers on larger farm plots, which also reduced their capacity for subsistence farming for themselves and their families (Bezner Kerr et al., 2019).

Research around biofortified banana varieties shows evidence that either supports the expansion and production or raises concerns over the deregulation of genome-editing technologies that veers attention away from genetically modified crops (Rock et al., 2023). Studies in support of biofortified bananas maintain a more economic, macro-level analysis that demonstrates the increase in incomes from higher yield and therefore greater cash availability for food purchases (Kikulwe and Asindu, 2020). Recent public concerns fear the proliferation of large-scale production overtaking land from small-scale farmers, and indirectly impacting food and nutritional insecurity of regional populations (Kikulwe et al., 2008). The limited gendered analysis suggests that those with larger landholdings and assets are set to benefit over small-scale farmers. The socio-cultural value of non-biofortified varieties remains associated with higher quality of taste and texture. However, studies suggest consumers and producers may opt to switch if marketability and yields increase (Marenya et al., 2022). While women and men banana producers both prioritize these factors, men are better positioned to benefit from the expansion of producing biofortified varieties due to their greater access to land and labor compared to women. Less restrictive regulatory measures for genome-edited crops may also contribute to growing numbers of biofortified crops entering smallholder cropping systems, negatively impacting the labor of many rural farming women in Uganda. How biofortified crops fare in markets and in post-harvest activities also influences the adoption and scale of impact across the region.

In SSA, commonly grown varieties of sweet potato are drought-tolerant crops and are cultivated and consumed by resource-poor households. Traditional white and yellow varieties are high in calories and starch but low in micronutrients and vitamins. Combined, these characteristics make sweet potato a relevant crop for biofortification. Programs introducing biofortifed sweet potato were piloted in Uganda and Mozambique by the International Potato Center (CIP) and Harvest Plus. Initial reports of these programs promoting and producing biofortified sweet potato showed positive nutritional outcomes and potential market interest, leading to further investments to expand breeding and distribution of sweet potato vines across 17 countries in SSA (CIP, 2010). An initial assessment of biofortified sweet potato consumption led by the CGIAR center demonstrated higher nutrient uptake and reduction in incidences of diarrhea in children with increased biofortified sweet potato production and household consumption (Hotz et al., 2012; de Brauw et al., 2017; Low et al., 2017). The aim of an expanded program in 2010 was to reach 20 million people by 2020 (CGIAR, 2019). Even though biofortified sweet potato breeding, production, and distribution did not specifically target women food producers, the implementation of promotional programs prioritized them through training and activities around food preparation, vine multiplication, commercialization, and processing opportunities (Low et al., 2017).

Marketing of biofortified sweet potato emphasized commercialization as a strategy to expand distribution and uptake through food purchases, processing opportunities, and sales. Products developed from biofortified sweet potato in the region included flour and biscuits in Rwanda and commercial purée and bread products in Kenya. A study on consumer preferences showed that the willingness to pay for the added value of vitamin A in the biscuits did not encourage consumers in the country to buy the product, without a great deal of promotion to targeted populations (Okello et al., 2014). These small-scale operations were meant to benefit women who produced biofortified sweet potato and who could invest in processing. However, it did not produce a long-term sustained revenue stream due to constraints in flour production such as limited yields, machinery costs, and repairs (Okello et al., 2014).

Further expansion of biofortified sweet potato commercial production toward processed food items revealed a higher benefit to men than women who produced biofortified crops, due in part to differences in resource access (land, labor, research, and extension support) and competing care obligations that women food producers faced in their daily lives (Shikuku et al., 2019). As with similar studies on gendered food labor, access to markets is limited to women at levels of the value chain beyond production (Gengenbach et al., 2018; Ume et al., 2023). Efforts to commercialize crops intended to increase the market value of the biofortified varieties over non-biofortified varieties. However, market accessibility required additional assets (e.g., time, labor, cash) and therefore excluded lower income households, and those more susceptible to dietary health challenges, despite initial investments in food-based micronutrients uptake that target the most vulnerable population (Okello et al., 2014; Mudege et al., 2017; Foley et al., 2021).

Recent studies have referred to gendered social norms and divisions of labor as limiting factors to women benefiting from engagement in the commercialization of biofortified crops (Mudege et al., 2019; Rao, 2020; Dinssa et al., 2022). In Malawi and Tanzania, studies on farmer perspectives of sweet potato production health and economic impacts showed that more men farmers controlled the management and income from the sale of vines because vine multiplication depended on land availability and ownership which was often allocated to the men in the household (Mudege et al., 2017; Rao, 2020). Initiatives that supported a commercialized distribution of vines in the western region of Tanzania competed with informal networks of vine sharing between neighboring—mostly women—food producers (Rao, 2020). These informal exchanges maintained social connections leading to shared labor in farming efforts while also sustaining sweet potato production without the purchase of new vines. Investments into commercial vine access then rely on purchases from those who have minimal engagement with these informal networks and therefore operate in often parallel, competing production systems of paid and unpaid local vine access.

Recent efforts point to a continuation of biofortified crops using CRISPR-Cas9 to target vitamin A deficiency and suggest similar commercialization pathways as seen with the biofortified sweet potato projects. In Ghana, researchers are currently looking into editing that removes the enzyme in sweet potato that is responsible for breaking down beta-carotene. Once this genetic trait is identified, additional varieties of sweet potato could be bred for different environmental and climatic conditions that could then include traits ideal for markets such as higher yields, longer shelf life, and lower moisture content (Gapko, 2021; Karembu, 2021). However, these changes resulting in new varieties will require careful considerations of the unanticipated changes in cropping systems and dietary practices and directly impact women’s on- and off-farm labor and time investments.

Contrary to biofortified crop integration, agroecological farming methods are shown to contribute to food and nutrition security through practices that increase soil fertility and reduce labor and input needs (Bezner Kerr et al., 2021). For example, in Malawi, investing in green manure application resulted in increased yields and reduction of losses while also decreasing the need for fertilizer application (Lucantoni and Domarle, 2023). Water conservation strategies are shown to mitigate the growing impact of climatic uncertainties on seasonality while also reducing the loss of yield and seeds (Wezel et al., 2020). The diversification of food crops and the subsequent provision of food that is rich in nutrients contribute to sustained dietary health outcomes as shown through a meta-study of agroecology practices (Bezner Kerr et al., 2021). Other studies have shown that food produced by agroecological methods tends to depend on local food markets to sell their produce, which reduces dependence on indirect buyers, or traders, while also ensuring more autonomy over the financial gains from their yields (Olweny et al., 2022; Ume et al., 2023).

Feminist agroecology, moreover, is based on a broader understanding of the economy and the intertwining of household, community, and agricultural responsibilities and benefits. It affirms that the economy must be centered on the reproduction of all resources that are necessary for life. It takes the production and consumption of food as a starting point and aims to democratize all power relations involved. While research in this area remains scarce in SSA, two recent studies from Malawi have pointed to the preservation of local and indigenous knowledge of crops, and particular benefit to women food producers in terms of their own health outcomes and well-being (Santoso et al., 2021; Bezner Kerr et al., 2022). Ume et al. (2023) demonstrated that farmer groups in Nigeria practicing agroecological farming (where 83% were women) increased their local market access and developed shared labor to support food security objectives. In addition to recognizing the nutritional benefits of agroecological farming practices, a growing body of literature points to the social and political benefits of agroecology that align with feminist goals of alleviating inequalities (Bezner Kerr et al., 2019), dismantling unequal power relations (Seibert et al., 2019; Espinal et al., 2021) and re-establishing governing and institutional structures that align with the diverse experiences of men and women in farming and food systems (Hillenkamp and Nobre, 2021). Research on the social, political impact of agroecological farming in the SSA region is limited and requires further collaborative efforts between farmer groups, national and regional research centers, and governments to examine its potential benefits for addressing nutritional health challenges, and in parallel with other technological strategies such as CRISPR-Cas9.

These case studies and reviews of agroecological farming practices demonstrate the gendered considerations required when addressing nutrition-related health challenges, breeding processes, labor investments, and post-harvest marketization and commercialization. These interrelated areas of agri-food systems mediate the outcomes of large-scale biofortification projects, which informs the potential for genome-editing technology integration. Careful consideration of gendered social norms and supporting women’s access and control over productive resources while reducing care labor could help shape the future design and implementation of biofortification projects. For genome editing, these considerations impact how cost-effectiveness and the efficiency of the technology is experienced by men and women food producers, respectively.

Gendered social norms around care labor, control over resources, as well as decision-making in household and farm matters continue to effect women’s access to limited productive resources and their ability to support their livelihoods. How traits and crops are selected, by whom, and the process in which these crops are integrated into existing cropping systems all shape the differences in the benefits between men and women growing biofortified crops. For genome editing, the selection process around crop and traits minimally considers farmer preferences, and therefore factors influencing women’s experiences with new varieties through genome editing, such as labor reduction, dietary stability, and marketability, are also minimized. Women’s responsibilities toward household food production take into consideration traits such as texture, taste, and malleability. For example, in Ethiopia, analysis of farmer preferences showed that women preparing maize for meals preferred the traditional varieties over QPM because of the texture and how easily it can be broken down into flour (O’Brien et al., 2016). Similarly, for orange sweet potato, moisture content of varieties high in beta-carotene resulted in shorter shelf life, which lead to fewer farmers preferring the high nutrient content over the better options for market sales and storage with dryer, yellow or white varieties (Mulwa et al., 2021). Based on the experiences with biofortified crops in the region, labor burdens in the household and on-farm responsibilities may increase for women, which then reinforces inequitable benefits from biofortification investments, and could potentially lead to unsustainble outcomes toward dietary health.

There are several factors that shape how biofortified crops benefit vulnerable populations, such as the quality and quantity of land allocated for these crops, the labor access for household and food production, and the potential for commercial, large-scale expansion. These differences in control over productive resources between men and women are dependent on how gendered social norms are challenged in particular settings and through regulatory and policy arenas. For banana production in Uganda and sweet potato in Tanzania, women producers prefer varieties that are also marketable, and yet their commitment to these would risk them being excluded from investments in commercial expansion due to competing responsibilities, and differential access and control over land, agro-inputs and the labor required for increased production. For genome-edited crops, these underlying structural challenges reduce the potential benefits for women food producers in the region, since current investments include few plans for consultation with trait and crop selection, distribution of new biofortified varieties, and post-harvest strategies.

A reorientation of dietary health and nutritional needs through feminist agroecology extends narrow responses to malnutrition through nutrient uptake and biofortification toward systems-level considerations. A more holistic analysis of the socio-economic and political factors shaping underlying causes of dietary deficiencies—and where this analysis is led by food producers targeted by biofortification projects—could, at the very least, address the benefit imbalance between men and women. Feminist agroecological approaches to farming recognize the unequal power relations within funding mechanisms and institutional implementation of agricultural development programming while also enabling rural women to advocate for control and ownership over productive resources needed to secure their livelihoods. Applying genome editing to biofortification projects furthers this “reductive focus on and interpretation of nutrients that involve the exaggeration, simplification or decontextualization of the understanding of the role of nutrients in dietary health” (Scrinis, 2016, p. 20). This reductive focus reinforces the dearth of opportunities for women to contribute to decisions made around crop and trait selection by institutions that distribute seeds and other agro-inputs and guide local farming systems.

From a feminist perspective, measuring the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of genome-editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 considers the unintended costs and consequential changes in on- and off-farm labor on women food producers. As shown in current and previous efforts in biofortification, increased care burdens—from land use changes (including cultivating new crop varieties) and commercialization efforts—without equitable distribution of productive resources will reinforce, rather than challenge, unequal benefits between men and women. Although genome-edited biofortified crops aim to accelerate the integration of new crops into local farming systems, there remains little research into the gendered dynamics of labor and production changes from this acceleration. The enhanced precision of genome editing reinforces the reductive nutrient-uptake approach to malnutrition without considering the risks of human error along the pathway of biofortification projects. Future long-term studies to analyze the cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and precision of genome editing require careful consideration of the potential gendered inequities and long-term dietary health impacts, based on current and previous analysis of biofortification projects.

In biofortification projects, women food producers are required to adopt, utilize, and participate in market activities to scale crops to population-level impact sustainably. At the same time, corresponding negative labor and market impacts on dietary health remain underrecognized and undervalued, resulting in gendered inequities in benefits from financial, labor, and time investments. As shown in the case studies, while nutrient-uptake strategies through food-based sources indirectly and directly rely on women to cultivate, harvest, and prepare new crops, interventions that apply a feminist agroecology lens to strengthening dietary health could result in more equitable benefits accruing to both men and women.

Considerations of a “win–win” narrative with potential for new streams of income generation to “improve” dietary health are crucial to the success of biofortification as a response to global malnutrition. At the same time, a narrowed focus on nutrient uptake, as shown in current and past biofortification projects in SSA, results in short-term, limited benefits that are inequitably distributed between men and women. Genome editing continues to permeate responses to malnutrition in the region, through investments in research and training in breeding new crop varieties that are potentially more pest-resistant, nutrient-rich and with high market value. Without a broader framing of underlying causes of dietary health challenges, these investments will fall short of their anticipated long-term outcomes. The inclusion of feminist agroecology, feminist funding innovations, and critical nutritional studies leadership could transform these responses beyond nutrient uptake, decenter technological solutions, and reconfigure financial and socio-political investments toward more equitable food system transformation.

The author is grateful for the useful feedback gained from participants at the Gene Editing and its Alternatives in Africa (GEAA) Workshop held at Dalhousie University on May 24–27, 2022, particularly from Enoch Kikulwe, Ann Kingiri, Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Joeva Rock, Matthew Schnurr, and the reviewers of this article.

There are no conflicts of interest.

How to cite this article: Rao, S. 2025. Meeting dietary health objectives through farming: A feminist review of biofortification and potential for genome editing in sub-Saharan Africa. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 13(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2022.00150

Domain Editor-in-Chief: Alastair Iles, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

Guest Editor: Joeva Sean Rock, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Knowledge Domain: Sustainability Transitions

Part of an Elementa Special Feature: Genome Editing and the Future of Food in Africa