Kenyan agri-businesswomen including small farmers in the value chain: are they “agents of change”?

Development organizations are increasingly investing in African women entrepreneurs as “agents of change” in achieving the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2016; World Bank, 2019; UN SDG, 2022; World Bank, 2024). The focus on women entrepreneurs finds its base in development policy shifts in the late 20th century, when the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) moved away from state-centered approaches to market-centered approaches. The dominant narrative of the WB and the IMF came to focus on the individual as a participant in the market (rather than a “beneficiary” of state resources) who is to act as the primary “agent” of development and progress (Lee, 2023). In line with this thinking, the WB and the IMF increasingly started promoting women entrepreneurs as catalytic agents in development around the 2010s (ibid.), funding state programs and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that aim to support and “empower” them.

Agri-food value chains receive special attention in these debates because agriculture – the principal base of these value chains – is the mainstay for the majority of the population in Africa, especially for women (FAO, 2023). Following the concept of inclusive growth (SDG 8), development organizations view women entrepreneurs in agri-business as key development partners to provide solutions for global challenges such as poverty (SDG 1), hunger (SDG 2) and gender inequalities (SDG 5) (UN, 2016; World Bank, 2019; FAO, 2023; World Bank, 2024). The focus is especially on women entrepreneurs who operate companies in the more profitable parts of the agri-food value chains, notably commercial production, trading, processing, wholesale and retail. To scrutinize the narrative in these debates, we refer to them in this article as “agri-businesswomen.” The argument is that agri-businesswomen contribute to the SDGs by driving economic growth – through activities such as developing innovative products and services, paying taxes, promoting exports and enhancing productivity – and because they are women, that they can contribute more to the SDGs than men by fostering inclusive growth, through the inclusion of women and other “vulnerable” groups in the value chain (GDPRD, 2016).

This expectation partially stems from the belief that women entrepreneurs possess particular “feminine” qualities such as care and empathy, making them more likely than men to prioritize the SDGs. For instance, on the UN SDG (2022) learning platform, a blog written by employees of the UN Industrial Development Organization reads as follows: “Women entrepreneurs are active agents of change to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. [ …] They were found to be more likely than men to emphasize social goals over economic goals and to [ …] focus their field of operation towards community needs or social needs” (emphasis added) (UN SDG, 2022). Development organizations base such claims on academic studies that show that women are generally more motivated than men to address the needs of their family and community (Mersha and Sriram, 2019; Rosca et al., 2020) and that women entrepreneurs spend (more of) their income (than men) on household's needs (Seshie-Nasser and Oduro, 2018). Women entrepreneurs, compared to men, are also reported to employ proportionately more women (Okah-Efogo and Timba, 2015) and are observed to act as leaders and role models for women who aspire to follow in their footsteps (Sequeira et al., 2016; Ojong et al., 2021), potentially enhancing women's positions in households and improving women's access to resources in society (Quisumbing et al., 2021).

Feminist scholars in entrepreneurship studies caution against (over)generalizing these observations; the risk is that universal “feminine” traits are attributed to women in general and to African women entrepreneurs in particular, reinforcing gender stereotypes (Clark Muntean and Ozkazanc-Pan, 2016). Instead, they argue, women entrepreneurs' interactions with gender norms resemble a dynamic and changing relationship (Calás et al., 2009; Tavenner and Crane, 2022). This means that their entrepreneurship is shaped by, and is shaping in turn, for example, social relations along intersections of gender, class and education. In the field of entrepreneurship studies in Africa, research on agri-business and its impacts in terms of development is receiving increasing attention (Navarra, 2019; Schelle and Pokorny, 2021; Wangu, 2021), yet dynamics of gender and intersecting relations are underexplored to date. Most studies in the field, consciously or otherwise, focus on men-operated businesses, and reportedly, men-operated businesses exclude female farmers because of a general perception of an “underperformance” of them compared to male farmers; the perception is that they operate smaller plots, and have lower yields and lower quality produce (ibid.). Building on this research and aiming to study whether women-operated businesses are able to avoid the exclusion of female farmers, this article takes inspiration from feminist standpoint theory (Harding, 1986; Jones et al., 2025) and focuses on situating the practices and experiences of twenty agri-businesswomen in Kenya, and linking them to the perceptions of impact of some of the farmers they aim to include.

The Kenyan government, influenced by the shifts in global development policy, frames women's entrepreneurship as a central driver of growth in the agricultural sector (KNBS, 2016). With a view to support women in agri-food value chains, it has implemented various affirmative action initiatives, including the Women Enterprise Fund and the National Government Affirmative Action Fund (MALFI, 2019; Mugyenyi et al., 2020). Likewise, many internationally funded NGOs in Kenya have launched development programs with a view to support Kenyan agri-businesswomen in their capacity to act as “agents of change” (Kimemiah and Kinyanjui, 2014). Brouwer et al. (2023) describe that these development programs generally equate development impact to economic growth, measured through indicators such as new business linkages, product development, increased sales and job creation, and that they typically assess “inclusion” or “gender outcomes” by using quantitative metrics, such as the number of female farmers involved in the value chain. Such an approach of counting “products”, “jobs” and “women” offers a narrow view of what it means for agri-businesswomen to include small farmers in the value chain and avoid the exclusion of women. More specifically, these indicators under-acknowledge how opportunities for farmers and women to participate in economic growth are related to structural inequalities in society along intersections of gender, class and education; and as a consequence, they fail to conceive how “impact” can mean different things for different people. In this article, we aim to broaden the perspective on the activities of agri-businesswomen in Kenya and seek to answer the following research question: How do Kenyan agri-businesswomen include small farmers in the value chain and how is the impact they have on them informed by intersecting gender dynamics?

This article proceeds with a brief discussion of the literature on inclusive agri-businesses, linking it to debates on gender and women (Section 2) and the methodology section (Section 3). Then it continues with the analysis of the agri-businesswomen's activities to include small farmers in the value chain (Section 4), and the article ends with a discussion and conclusion (Section 5).

Academic literature refers to “inclusive agri-businesses” (IABs) in terms of agri-businesses that directly involve “low-income” populations in the value chain as suppliers, workers, processors, distributors or retailers (German et al., 2020; Wangu, 2021). Most IAB studies focus on so-called “small-scale,” “subsistence” or “smallholder” farmers as the primary “low income” group involved (Bellemare and Bloem, 2018; Grashuis and Su, 2019; Bizikova et al., 2020), measuring development impacts either on the level of the agri-business (i.e. size, profitability, number of farmers included) (Chamberlain and Anseeuw, 2019; Schoneveld, 2022) or on the level of the smallholder farmer (i.e. productivity, incomes, production practices, product quality) (Bellemare and Bloem, 2018; Grashuis and Su, 2019; Bizikova et al., 2020). This approach has received critique because it fails to capture the layered and situated impact that inclusion in the value chain might have for farmers. In an effort to move beyond conventional business-focused metrics, some scholars have sought to assess agri-businesses’ development impact through the lens of “value sharing,” focusing on dynamics of ownership and voice, and the distribution of risks and rewards (Vermeulen and Cotula, 2010; Chamberlain and Anseeuw, 2019). These studies have resulted in descriptions of so-called “value creation instruments” (Chamberlain and Anseeuw, 2019; Weng et al., 2023), opening up the debate on understanding various form of inclusive development and impact, in all its different forms. However, even when done holistically, the use of exogenously defined concepts of “value” and “impact” in IAB studies, implies the risk of overlooking how entrepreneurs and the people involved in the value chain might experience impact on their own terms (Schoneveld, 2022). Acknowledging this, German et al. (2020) propose to assess agri-business’ impacts on farmer livelihoods in forms valued by the participating farmers themselves. Rather than adopting a pre-defined concept of “inclusion” or fixed set of criteria to assess “impact,” they apply a participatory methodology with open-ended questions to learn how farmers understand impact (cf. Mangnus, 2023). We are inspired by this approach; it puts the experiences of agri-businesswomen and small farmers at the center of analysis and it helps to develop a more situated – and perhaps more transformative – understanding of the potential development impacts of agri-businesses (cf. Cornwall and Rivas, 2015).

Small farmers in Africa form a very heterogeneous group of people (FAO, 2023), and not all of them are “low income” (Liebrand et al., 2023). Broadly, there are subsistence farmers in Africa, producing mainly for household consumption, and there are small commercial farmers in Africa who primarily grow for sale (Smart and Hanlon, 2014; Okunlola et al., 2016). The first group tends to have (very) low incomes, depends on rain-fed agriculture and supplements earnings through off-farm work. They hardly play a role in commercial production and minimally participate in agricultural markets. In contrast, the second group typically has better access to land, irrigation, and inputs such as labor, seeds and fertilizer. They often sell directly to consumers, local traders or agri-businesses. In Kenya, according to government data, the broad division is as follows: about 76% of the 6.4 million farming households engage in subsistence farming and 23% focus on market production (GoK, 2019). While the boundary between the two groups is fluid, this article generally focuses on the small farmers in Kenya who sell, or are capable to sell (part of) their produce commercially. Hence, it is this group of “low income” farmers—we prefer to describe them as “small commercial farmers” – that agri-businesses in Kenya typically can and seek to include in their business operations.

Generally, inclusion of small commercial farmers in the value chain of agri-business in Africa takes shape through practices of contract farming, defined here as seasonal or longer-term agreements between agri-businesses and small commercial farmers involving crop production and sales, and the provisioning of inputs, credit and training to farmers (Vicol et al., 2022). Contract farming enables agri-businesses to establish relations with farmers that involve some degree of control and mutual dependency. These relations are required for agri-businesses to operate the business and make money, and through it, agri-businesswomen, potentially can act as “agents of change” and have an impact on small farmers (“driving development” in the words of Cole, 2022). Contract farming involves both opportunities and risks for agri-businesses and farmers (Cole, 2022; Vicol et al., 2022). Agri-businesses can profit from trading and processing, but they need to invest in farmer relations for the sourcing of produce, and face uncertainties such as poor harvests or insufficient supply and side-selling by farmers (Ménard and Vellema, 2020). Farmers in turn can earn income through sales but must weigh production risks, delayed or reduced payments for the harvest, and potential (debt) dependency on agri-businesses (ibid.). By all means, these are delicate matters for small farmers in Kenya, because they tend to practice cultivation under daunting circumstances: intermittent rainfall, immature markets; expensive and hard to find inputs; low prices; expensive rural credit, little technical support; few facilities for irrigation; and often, limited assistance from the state or private sector (KNBS, 2024; IFPRI, 2024). Notably, Kenya's status as a net importer of fertilizers and pesticides (KNBS, 2024) exposes farmers to global price fluctuations, and climate change is predicted to worsen erratic rainfall patterns, increasing the risk of droughts, floods, pests and soil erosion (IFPRI, 2024). In these conditions, in theory, agri-businesses can make a difference for farmers, supplying them with inputs and offering a market for their produce, but it also means that small farmers vis-à-vis agri-businesses can be expected to have limited bargaining power; hence, they have few offtake options for their produce and this puts them typically in a position of “price takers.” For contract farming to be “inclusive,” it must thus be mutually beneficial under these difficult circumstances (Kelly et al., 2015; Cole, 2022).

In Kenya, according to official data, there are 38,120 registered agri-businesses in the country that focus on food product manufacturing and 2,100 that focus on commercial production (KNBS, 2016). These data do not specify how many of them are women-owned, but presumably it is less than one-third of the companies, because women-owned MSMEs (Micro-, Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises), according to the same data, make up approximately 32% of the total registered MSMEs and tend to be micro-sized (ibid.) ^[1]. The Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics observes that women are disproportionately concentrated in unregistered micro-scale entrepreneurial activities in local markets (ibid.). The world of registered agri-businesses in Kenya can thus be considered as male-dominated, especially in the parts of the value chain that include commercial agricultural production, trading, processing, wholesale and retail (McCulloch and Ota, 2002; FAO, 2014; Kathothya, 2017). The tendency is that Kenyan women are mainly active in the value chain as small-scale cultivators or unregistered micro-processors and street vendors at local markets.

In Kenya, similar to other sub-Saharan countries (Carney, 1988; Bryceson, 1995; Peters, 2004; Doss et al., 2017; ; Liebrand et al., 2023), fields are cultivated by both men and women, though men are often perceived as “commercial” farmers and women as “subsistence” farmers. When grown for cash, “commercial” crops like maize are viewed as “masculine,” with profits supposedly going to men, and when grown for subsistence, crops such as fruits and vegetables are seen as “feminine,” with surplus sales supposedly benefiting women (Tavenner and Crane, 2018). In rural sub-Saharan Africa, women generally face greater barriers to commercial farming, with access to land, inputs, and services often being mediated by male relatives (Anderson et al., 2020; Badstue et al., 2020). In relation to land, for instance, customary laws in Kenya often imply that daughters are not allowed to inherit ancestral land; just 25% of Kenyan women aged 15–49 state that they “own” agricultural land, compared to 35% of men and just 13% of these women have a title deed with their name on it, compared to 23% of men (KNBS, 2022) ^[2]. That having said, female cultivators often have informal access to land, especially for the cultivation of “kitchen gardens” but also, to larger fields, depending on labor input; hence, if they act as the cultivator of the field, they basically are the main decision makers in the management of the crop (Fischer et al., 2017). It is in these circumstances that female cultivators can see opportunities to interact with agri-business companies and benefit from inclusion in the value chain.

To situate the experiences of the Kenyan agri-businesswomen and of the female and male farmers they aim to include in the value chain, we take inspiration from feminist standpoint theory (Harding, 1986; Jones et al., 2025). In doing so, we contribute to a nascent body of research on feminist entrepreneurship, focusing on the Global South and seeking to study the diversity of experiences of women and challenge one-dimensional portrayals of women in entrepreneurship (see the editorial of a recently published special issue of this journal, Jones et al., 2025). Considering the standpoint of women in research means considering their position in society, taking into account divisions of gender, class and education background, and other intersecting structures of marginalization and discrimination in life (Sindani, 2022). It means to value women's practices and experiences in doing research (what women are doing; what inclusion and impact mean for them), starting with paying attention to how women refer to themselves and to each other. In our research, the agri-businesswomen explained to us that they see themselves as “businesswomen,” differentiating themselves from women street vendors and other types of informal entrepreneurs in Kenyan cities, and they referred to “village women” to describe the female cultivators whom they sought to include in the value chain. The farm women in the villages, in turn, referred to “sales persons” or “agronomists” to describe their interactions with the agri-businesses of the women. Illustratively, these labels indicate a standpoint in society and hint at a world of differences in class and education background among various groups of women in Kenya.

Harding (1986) points out that gender differences generally are visible in three ways: symbolism, structure and identity. First, gender differences are visible in assigning dualistic gender metaphors to perceived dichotomies that rarely have anything to do with sex differences (gender symbolism). Second, as a consequence of appealing to gender dualisms, gender differences are visible in the division of social activities between different groups of humans (gender structure) and third, gender differences are a form of socially constructed individual identity that is imperfectly correlated with sex differences (gender identity). Taken together, these dimensions of gender produce norms and expectations in society that constrain and inspire behavioral practices of men and women, though they do not determine them. We take from it that gender norms and expectations are dynamic, meaning that they can shape practices of entrepreneurship, and vice versa, practices of entrepreneurship can shape (new) gender norms and expectations (Calás et al., 2009; Marlow, 2020). Gender norms and expectations can be considered to provide a script for how to act and be as a man or woman (West and Zimmerman's, 1987), but these scripts are never played out exactly the same way; hence, gender norms and expectations change and are negotiated in the everyday process of being and acting as an entrepreneur (Marlow, 2020).

Paying attention to differences among women, and focusing on gender norms and expectations in studying dynamics of “inclusion” and “impact” is important because several studies have highlighted that agri-businesses fail to benefit small farmers, especially female cultivators (Navarra, 2019; Schelle and Pokorny, 2021; Wangu, 2021). In addition, these studies note shortcomings in the conceptualization and methodology of the work in the sense that most research on this topic has been conducted without a clear conceptualization of what gender is and how it works (ibid.). In response to these observations, this article adopts a standpoint feminist perspective to analyze how Kenyan agri-businesswomen seek to include small farmers in the value chain, zooming in on their experiences and “practices of inclusion” and how they are perceived by the farmers they seek to include.

To scrutinize the “agents of change” narrative in debates on development and inclusive agri-business, we contacted successful agri-businesswomen in Kenya for interviews and we approached some of the small farmers they included in the value chain. We focused on studying actual practices and how they understand inclusion and impact on their own terms. In addition, the lead author visited company locations (collection points, packing halls, processing plants) and farmers' fields, making observations and finally, we used a review of academic and policy literature on feminist entrepreneurship; gender and agricultural production in Africa and contract farming to frame the analysis (see above).

In total, we selected twenty successful Kenyan agri-businesswomen for our research, based on the following criteria: (1) a Kenyan woman being the registered (co-) founder and (co-) director of the business, (2) the business being registered as a limited company in Kenya and (3) the business being active in commercial agricultural production, trading, processing, wholesale or retail in horticulture, staple crops and dairy value chains. We focused on these high-value and profitable agri-food value chains in Kenya because both the government and development organizations actively promote women’s participation in them. We considered their participation in these “high value” activities as a loose indication of their “success” in business and their capacity to penetrate the market. The agri-businesswomen were approached through online platforms such as Value4Her, Africa's first digital platform for women-led agri-businesses, and the professional network of the lead author, who worked at the time for a Dutch development organization in Kenya ^[3]. It also happened through snowball sampling, a practical approach given the lack of publicly available data and limited scientific representation of this group (Neergaard, 2007). The potential bias of homogenous referrals related in this sampling approach was mitigated by sourcing contacts from multiple and diverse development organizations, women's networks and business networks. In total, 67 women who fitted the selection criteria were approached and eventually, 20 women agreed to be included in this research.

Table 1 provides an overview of the characteristics of the included agri-businesswomen. The selected women belonged to Kenya's middle and higher classes. Many of them held university degrees, making them part of the country's educational elite, as only 3.5% of Kenyans have attained this level (KNBS, 2019). Their ages ranged widely, from 29 to 74 at the time of the initial interviews. The size of their businesses also varied: most of them employed between 10 and 50 workers (nine in total); some employed over 50 workers (seven in total) and a few less than 10 (four in total) (see Table 1). While some women opted to source all or part of the produce from their own farms (eight women) or larger commercial farmers (four women), half of them primarily relied on small commercial farmers, sourcing from an average of 3,100 farmers. These women were thus important actors in the sector as they collectively interacted with a number of farmers equaling around two percent of Kenya's small commercial farming population. The majority (12 women) operated in horticultural value chains – chili, herbs, bananas, avocados – crops that can be profitably grown on small plots (1–2 ha), explaining their extensive farmer networks. Four women worked with staple crops (e.g. sorghum, maize, cassava), three in dairy and one in both dairy and horticulture. The women's businesses had operations in eight counties, located in three different agro-ecological zones in Kenya: Western Kenya, the Central Highlands and the Semi-Arid Uplands. These regions host some of Kenya's most fertile agricultural land and are home to the majority of the small commercial farmers population in Kenya (see Figure 1).

Between March 2020 to December 2022, the agri-businesswomen participated in two rounds of interviews, four rounds of reflection sessions and several impromptu check-ins via email and WhatsApp. A total of 45 small commercial farmers (29 women, 16 men) linked to the business operations of the agri-businesswomen were interviewed in Kenya by the lead author from October to December 2022, based on contact lists provided by the businesswomen. Throughout the interview and observation period, qualitative data were coded and analyzed inductively, using a software program (NVivo). We operationalized the research by focusing broadly on “practices of inclusion” and “impacts.” These were basically the major themes discussed in interviews and follow-up participatory reflection sessions. Investigating the practices of the agri-businesswomen and the perceptions of small commercial farmers offers the opportunity to scrutinize how the impact as intended by an agri-businesswoman relates to the “impact” as experienced and described by farmers (Chamberlain and Anseeuw, 2019). To iterate, we thus operationalized “impact” by analyzing how small commercial farmers experienced their inclusion in the agri-business operations according to their own aspirations rather than through predefined quantitative measures (Pollard, 2006; Tavenner and Crane, 2022).

The agri-businesswomen used a variety of practices to include small commercial farmers in their business operations. Broadly, they can be divided into two categories: (1) practices related to contract farming and collective organization and (2) practices targeting women cultivators specifically with a view to including them in the value chain. We discuss these practices below.

In order to gain more control over the quality and quantity of produce at the source- and to offer a more stable market to small commercial farmers – the agri-businesswomen often introduced formal pre-agreed supply contracts. Many of these contracts were preceded by informal agreements, as a means to build trust. At the beginning of their businesses, Kenyan agri-businesswomen generally started small: buying produce informally from a few dozen farmers from the area they were living themselves, based on verbal agreements, adding value to the produce (sorting, grading, packaging, processing) and selling the (processed) products to friends, family, local traders or small shops in the neighborhood. These farmers were often women, especially in the case of horticulture crops. This dynamic suggests that they looked out for farmers who were already practicing some form of commercial cultivation, as a means to reduce “start up” risks and build the business on already-developed cultivation practices by small commercial farmers.

To persuade farmers to sell to them, agri-businesswomen explained, it was crucial to establish trust through socially embedded relations and prompt payments. Farmers reported that they frequently encountered “unreliable” traders who make promises to pay after the collection of produce but fail to do so when it actually happens. Building trust to overcome farmers' initial doubts and showing to be a reliably party in the exchange was thus important. Once larger consignment contracts were procured with formal customers, the agri-businesswomen started to utilize more formal practices, such as written harvest contracts to secure supply. These contracts typically stipulated a pre-agreed price (in most cases a set price per kilogram, depending on the crop), the quality requirements of the produce and in some instances the obligation for farmers to exclusively sell to the agri-business. To ensure that farmers could meet stricter quality standards, they provided pre-financed inputs such as certified seeds and offered group training. As the agri-businesswomen expanded the pool of farmers they worked with, the average distance between farmers' fields and the agri-businesswomen's factories and offices increased as well. To reduce the transportation costs of the business operations, they set up collection centers or – when the produce quantity was large enough – started offering pickup services from the farmer's plot. This enabled agri-businesswomen to offer farmers better or stable prices for the produce in some cases. The farmers with a perceived high production potential (i.e. those with larger plot or expressed willingness to invest in cultivation) also received on-farm extension services through a company agronomist visiting the field and providing farmers with crop-specific advice.

In addition, the agri-businesswomen encouraged cultivators to organize themselves in groups or associations with a view to secure volume production. Weighing the costs of organizing, training and including more farmers in the business operations against the returns from selling better quality products in higher volumes, was a recurrent concern for agri-businesswomen. If they invested “too much” in farmer extension, they explained, they could risk bankruptcy of their company. If they invested “too little,” they risked noncompliance of produce and products with customer requirements and the prospect of losing larger customer contracts. To reduce the costs and risks of investing in the pool of contracted farmers and farmer capacity building, several agri-businesswomen cooperated with development programs in the organization of cultivators in collectives or producer groups. NGOs grouped farmers together, supporting them in group management and – depending on the size and organization of the group – in accessing financial services, agri-inputs, insurances, irrigation and additional training. This lowered the costs of operation for agri-businesswomen, especially in the case of producers being geographically dispersed. NGO support, however, was rarely financially sustained and limited for the duration of a few years as it was often tied to donor funding. The agri-businesswomen explained that it tended to cover the initial investment of setting-up groups, but not the longer-term investments required to keep the groups operational, and they expressed that they were generally not able or willing to cover costs for longer-term skill building and input delivery to farmers, especially to smaller ones with limited production potential.

All of the agri-businesswomen reported buying from female small commercial farmers. In horticulture, this happened largely by default, as they explained, because “farming [fruits and vegetables] is a woman's business” (Reflection Session 1, 22 April 2021). Determining the exact number of female cultivators was difficult for them as most of the women-cultivated plots were part of the family landholdings and the supply contracts were often signed by a male member of the family, acting as head of the household or by a representative of a producers group. The agri-businesswomen were aware that female cultivators were thus not always the legal owners of the land or the signatories of the contracts. They understood that this might have an effect on women's control over “their plot” of land and the ways in which female cultivators could benefit from the profits of their labor. In other words, they explained that it is not uncommon that “wives” have to hand over the sale proceeds to “their” husbands. About half of the agri-businesswomen who sourced from small commercial farmers (five in total) provided male and female farmers with the same services, offering identical contracts, provisions and group arrangements.

About half of the interviewed agri-businesswomen sought to specifically target women cultivators with a view to include them in the value chain. They aimed to support village women by assisting them: “[to not] just rely on men or just [to] rely on [ …] their community, [but] to give them [village women] a source of income, so they can [ …] rely on themselves” (Interview, 9 October 2020). As mentioned earlier, women tend to be responsible for kitchen gardens and grow fruits and vegetables for subsistence needs. Female farmers explained that when such “feminine” horticulture crops can be sold at the market and the husband decides to grow them commercially at larger fields, he is likely to claim the profits himself. In certain cases, female cultivators reported that they made all the decisions in the fields that they attended, including the bigger ones, especially if they owned the land or if their husbands worked off-farm (female-headed households). We observed these women to be active farmers or having off-farm jobs (e.g. teaching) while managing the fields. Both men and women with off-farm jobs, we observed, hired family members or casual workers (up to ten persons during peak seasons), or a manager for daily operations of cultivation. Regardless of the arrangement, married female cultivators emphasized concerns of “out-earning” their husbands, because it reportedly could lead to intra-household conflicts.

The agri-businesswomen who focused on supporting female cultivators wanted them to gain control over the money earned. In their view, this would strengthen women's say in household decisions related to land use and crop cultivation. Here, the agri-businesswomen seemed to have a dual goal: making female cultivators (more) reliable producers by making them (more) independent from their male spouses, and supporting female cultivators based on supposedly shared ideals of sisterhood. Some of the agri-businesswomen went as far as offering one-on-one coaching to some village women who, in their view, showed a willingness to approach cultivation activities from a commercial perspective. They also encouraged village women to form women-only farmer groups; they helped them to open bank accounts or M-Pesa accounts and they provided them with additional training on saving money, using clean energy and cooking stoves, and nutrition and health for instance. One agri-businesswoman trained women to solar-dry vegetables; one helped women farmers to earn income by forming a cooperative for turning banana peels into toilet paper, sanitary pads and hair extensions; and one offered village women the opportunity to buy shares in her soya processing business.

A key aim of the agri-businesswomen, they explained, was to ensure village women retained control over their earnings: “you have to know how to separate them [village women] from their bosses. Their bosses are their husbands” (Reflection Session 4, 5 December 2022). The agri-businesswomen claimed that husbands might “misuse” the money in the sense of drinking alcohol or marrying another wife, whereas women, in their view, would spend it on the household or re-invest it in farming. The latter created the prospect for them, to reduce business risks and build on farmers' labor and investments in commercial agriculture. Some female cultivators reported that they were paid via personal M-Pesa accounts or “under the table,” meaning that cash was given to them without informing their husbands. Based on the expectation held by several agri-businesswomen that “women [farmers] are more trustworthy [than men] and will put that money [sale proceeds] to good use [spend it on household needs or agriculture]” (Reflection session 2, round 2, 11 February 2022), they targeted women for their businesses to foster a more loyal and reliable pool of farmers in the long term. Generally, they thus regarded female cultivators as “better than” male cultivators, i.e. more responsible, caring, trustworthy, especially in horticulture farming. Beyond sisterhood ideals, the targeting of village women was thus a strategy of some of the agri-businesswomen to manage risks and gain a more loyal and reliable pool of contracted cultivators for their companies.

The small commercial farmers reported various forms of impact regarding the practices of inclusion described above. We describe these below, following the same categorization: (1) impacts of contract farming and collective organization and (2) impacts of targeting women cultivators specifically.

Small commercial farmers – both women and men – reported that agri-businesswomen's pre-agreed supply contracts helped them to cover basic needs. Farmers shared that the contracts provided price stability and offered them the choice to refuse regular traders: “When we produce our [crops] from the farm we know the exact price we are going to get per kilo [ …] They [the agri-businesses] are saviors from these brokers [regular traders]” (Group interview farmers, 11 November 2022). The agri-businesswomen offered similar types of contracts to both male and female cultivators. This meant that female farmers under contract generally were getting paid “better” prices for their produce than female farmers who sold to regular traders. Female farmers reported that they often experienced discriminatory treatment by regular traders who offered lower prices to them compared to male farmers. It was reported by them that the cash income helped them to pay for children's school fees or contributed to building a permanent housing structure. Several male and female cultivators under contract reported increased harvest and higher income as a result of getting access to inputs, extension services, group training and knowledge about new agricultural practices. Some of them considered the certifications received in trainings as an official recognition of skill and in one instance, it was used by a farmer to obtain a job at an agri-vet shop. It illustrates that contract farming can involve nonmonetary rewards for farmers.

However, farmers also explained the various risks of cultivating under contract. Reportedly, sales agents of the companies sometimes refused to buy the pre-agreed produce in case of machinery breakdown or agronomists failed to deliver the promised supporting services, thus breaking the contract. Farmers reported that this resulted in “spoiled harvests” and “lost income” for them. It reveals that farmers under contract could not always fully rely on the guaranteed off-take of their produce. In other instances, the agri-businesswomen explained, they cut out farmers completely from business operations. For example, three agri-businesswomen who initially sourced fruits and vegetables from small farmers and exported the produce to international wholesalers in Europe, shifted to selling herbs and avocados from their own farms. Exporting rules to Europe had become stricter and these changes jeopardized the financial viability of their businesses. In these cases, the risks were thus directly pushed “down” on the shoulders of small farmers by cutting them out of the value chain. The agri-businesswomen explained that they did not have confidence in the idea that the farmers could meet the new standards. Small farmers reported that it was sometimes difficult for them to produce the agreed quality and quantity of the produce due to intermittent rainfall and other weather-related risks. In such cases, they reported, agri-businesswomen rejected their crops due to “too low” quality and quantity and practiced “first pick.” A male farmer from Kisii county shared, for instance: “We used to supply to them [the company], but they would take some [bananas] and leave others. So some bananas would get spoiled” (Interview, 16 September 2022). Furthermore, farmers explained that rising prices for agricultural inputs prevented them from making a profit in farming if the prices offered by the agri-businesswomen were not adjusted accordingly. Agri-businesswomen, in turn, reported that they were not able or willing to do this because international customers refused to break open the agreed consignment contracts and pay more. They felt that they were “caught in the middle”: between increased prices for inputs and tight contracts with customers. In these cases, the agri-businesswomen in turn stuck to the contracts with their suppliers, sticking to the pre-agreed prices with farmers, meaning that the burden of price fluctuations for agricultural inputs ultimately fell on the shoulders of cultivators. In addition, the agri-businesswomen struggled to provide opportunities to cash-poor farmers operating on smaller plots. Such farmers were often deterred from selling to the companies because of potentially lengthy payment periods. The agri-businesswomen admitted that farmers under contract often had to wait for their payments for several weeks because they themselves were waiting for payments from their own customers. Here, the risk of stalled payments by customers positioned at the end of the value chain was thus also pushed on the shoulders of small farmers. Not surprisingly, the agri-businesswomen reported that farmers under contract were “side-selling” to regular traders, reportedly at prices lower than what was agreed in the supply contracts.

As noted above, many agri-businesswomen sought to build a reliable pool of contracted producers by offering supporting services such as the pick-up of produce, on-farm extension and collective organization. The agri-businesswomen explained that it is only rewarding for them to offer (free) pick up service to farmers if they produce large(r) quantities. In case of farmers who delivered smaller quantities of produce, agri-businesswomen asked for fees for transport or they instructed farmers to organize transport themselves to reach a collection center or the factory. Such transportation fees, according to a female farmer, “eat into the profit” (Interview, 9 September 2022) and made it unattractive for her to sell to the company. Finally, the agri-businesswomen explained, it was “too costly” for them to provide smaller farmers with on-farm extension services. Personal visits were generally preferred by farmers over group training as it involved specific field and crop-based advice. However, the agri-businesswomen elaborated that they provided such visits only to the more skilled and resourceful farmers because on-farm visits are more expensive than group training. Smaller cash-poor farmers, such as women who cultivated kitchen gardens, were thus likely to be excluded from the agri-businesswomen's operations. The agri-businesswomen typically encouraged group formation as a “solution,” but some female farmers were reluctant to participate in it because of membership fees or regular contributions for which, they explained, they had to persuade their husbands to support them with cash. Generally, we observed, female farmers who acted as small commercial producers and cultivated under contract for the agri-businesses were the exception: they were women in charge of big fields, whose husbands had an off-farm job; they were women who legally owned land, and notably, they were women who had succeeded in becoming part of youth or women farmer groups.

The impacts of the women-focused practices deployed by some of the agri-businesswomen were mixed at best. The agri-businesswomen tried to persuade female cultivators to increase productivity as a way to earn more money, with a view that they could reinvest it into cultivation practices for more reliable and high-quality production. Several of them, however, complained about what they perceived as the lack of aspirations of village women. One chili-processing agri-businesswoman recounted, for instance, how she coached a village woman who earned 25,000 KES (about 195 USD) from her first chili harvest, but that she did not put in the effort in the follow-up season, because she was already able to pay school fees from the first harvest. The agri-businesswoman recalled and explained her view: “She [the village woman] was not able to think that, okay, can I get more money to do something else? [ …] This is the problem with the women [in the village], they look at the immediate need only” (Interview, 20 October 2022). Similarly, when the soya-processing agri-businesswoman offered her shares to female cultivators in exchange for lower payments for their labor, they refused. The female farmers indicated to her that they preferred to be hired as casual workers and receive full cash payments.

From the perspective of small commercial farmers, these apparently “short-term” choices make sense. As mentioned earlier, many reported they had previously interacted with unreliable traders, making them wary of long-term promises or any form of agreements with sales persons or agronomists of the agri-businesses. Farmers perceived long(er) term agreements as risky. Additionally, female cultivators explained that they had to carefully talk about cash income to avoid feelings of shame of their husbands; hence, it could be explained in public that the husband is not able to provide for “his wife”. We noted that some of the agri-businesswomen's practices seemed to exacerbate these issues, particularly when husbands felt that it was openly known that their wives were being paid without their approval. The risk of facing intra-household conflicts and intra-community gossip could lead to difficult situations for women cultivators. Saliently, such risks were hardly felt by the agri-businesswomen themselves; they belonged to the middle and higher classes in society and earning a cash income was normal for them. Hence, they often had options to shift to paid employment or rely on income from other activities. Female farmers recognized these differences in class and privilege; they shared with us to be inspired by the agri-businesswomen's success, but also, they told us, they could not really relate to them. They explained that they were not in a position to follow their example, because they lacked access to credit, higher education and elite networks.

To scrutinize the “agents of change” narrative in ongoing development debates and assess whether agri-businesswomen are fulfilling the expectations of pursuing inclusive entrepreneurship, this article has empirically examined how Kenyan agri-businesswomen seek to include small farmers in the value chain, and how the impact they have on them is shaped by intersecting dynamics of gender, class and education, especially for women farmers. The agri-businesswomen included in the analysis for this article clearly are important actors in Kenya's agri-food sector; at the time of interviews, they interacted with around two percent of Kenya's small commercial farmer population, including on average 3,100 cultivators in the value chain; and they offered new contract farming opportunities to them, including the supply of inputs, pre-agreed prices and extension and collection services. In addition, some of them specifically supported female cultivators through group formation, training and direct cash payments. These opportunities are generally not provided by regular traders or the government and farmers reported that they helped them to increase productivity and secure income. The farmers that we interviewed also reported that the collaboration with the companies provided them with nonmonetary rewards, such as exposure to new income-generating activities (fruit drying, banana peel processing) and access to nutrition and health training. The agri-businesswomen under study in this article can thus be considered to act as “agents of change” in creating new market opportunities for small commercial farmers and driving economic growth. In short, they add value to agriculture.

The agri-businesswomen's practices of “adding value” to agriculture and the agri-food sector, however, do not necessarily lead to “adding inclusion”. Notably, they tend to include farmers in the value chain who already practice small-scale commercial agriculture or show a capacity to do so. These tend to be relatively larger or organized farmers who can ensure product quantity and quality, and absorb payment delays. The inclusion in the value chain of subsistence farmers, located in the dry and less fertile regions in Kenya, and of cash-poor farmers and women who cultivate kitchen gardens, was generally considered “too risky” and “too costly” by the agri-businesswomen under study in this article; it was not seen as a feasible or attractive opportunity by them, yet it is these farmers that belong to the most marginalized groups in the population. The agri-businesswomen's practices of including small commercial farmers in the value chain, connecting them to markets and new income-generating opportunities, contributed at best only partially to broader-based “inclusive” development and SDG objectives (“leaving no one behind”). These observations provide an opportunity for entrepreneurship studies to explicitly reflect on what inclusion is or can be in the case of promoting “value creation instruments” (Weng et al., 2023), such as contract farming, group formation and the targeting of women. More specifically, the scholarly debate on IAB can benefit from a more explicit reflection on how inclusion is conceptualized, discussed and evaluated, by placing the situated experiences of agri-businesswomen and farmers at the center of analysis.

The analysis of the impact of agri-businesswomen's practices of inclusion also clearly reveals that what impact is or can be for them, and for male and female farmers, is located in the intersections of gender, class and education. The agri-businesswomen studied in this article are negotiating norms of masculinity in the agri-food sector in the act of performing as successful entrepreneurs, building their businesses as women and “rewriting” the script of what educated women of middle and high classes can do in Kenya. In their capacity of being directors, they can thus be considered as “agents of change” in a longer-term process of emancipation and empowerment, at least for educated women of middle and high classes in Kenya, but not necessarily for rural women of lower classes and education status. In expanding the value chain, we described above, they tend to respect existing gender relations in the village, leaving norms unchallenged, hiring men as sales agents and agronomists, and working with male farmers as heads of the household and paying them for the produce delivered. At the same time, they can be seen to challenge gender norms in the village, targeting women as preferred cultivators, paying cash to them directly and encouraging them to do women-based group formation and training. Here, supposedly shared ideals of sisterhood are tied to strategies of the women to reduce business risks and create a reliable and trustworthy pool of contracted producers. In doing so, the agri-businesswomen in this article can be seen to both challenge and re-enforce existing gender norms in the village; hence, they work with village women in their capacity as commercial farmers and cash-earnings, a performance that is generally associated with masculinity in agriculture in Kenya, but they simultaneously target women for horticulture cultivation based on stereotypical ideas of women's supposed feminine qualities of being more caring, trustworthy and hard-working than men.

These observations invite scholars and development practitioners to rethink the relation between gender and impact in entrepreneurship studies and the (potential) role of women entrepreneurs as heroines and agents of change in development (Anderson et al., 2020; Badstue et al., 2020; Mangnus, 2023). The social distance that is located in the intersection of gender, class and education, between women in agri-businesses and women in villages, implies that agri-businesswomen are not seen by women in the village as role models. Hence, they are not necessarily developmental heroines for them, because they do not share the position and privileges to follow in their footsteps. By implication, development policies and projects that support agri-businesswomen in targeting female cultivators, based on the concept of one-size-fits-all of gender, can inadvertently make the lives of women in villages more difficult, leading potentially to conflicts with their husbands over cash payments. In terms of practical outcomes, this may not be the envisioned impact of development organizations, but such conflicts may well hint at grassroots feminist struggles for women's rights and justice (Cornwall and Rivas, 2015). In other words, if the goal is to contribute to a more strategic and transformative agenda for gender and development in addition to a practical one, then scholars and development practitioners need to look beyond counting “products,” “jobs” and “women,” and situate entrepreneurship and its potential impact for development in the intersections of gender, class and education.

Our gratitude goes out to the businesswomen and farmers who participated in this research. We also thank Mercy Kolundu for organizing, translating and transcribing interviews with the lead author during the field visits.