A top official of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Tuesday called on the world to enhance women's role in overcoming hunger and poverty.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the FAO, made the call in a FAO conference held in Rome, saying that programs for social and economic development will not succeed unless women have equal access to factors of production, particularly land.

"Women are at the forefront of food production in all regions of the world," he said.

"But women are denied access to the essential tools necessary for their work, including factors of production such as land, credit, information, training and the power to take decisions," he said.

In sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, women produce at least 80 percent of food staples. In South- and Southeast Asia they are responsible for some 60 percent of agriculture and food production.

Diouf called on all the concerned to place women's access to land at the heart of national and international development policy.

Marcela Villarreal, director of FAO's Gender and Population Division, said today's economic development rests on the capacity to innovate, to generate knowledge and to adopt technological change.

"Not investing in one half of the population means a country is not benefiting from the contribution of that half of its human resources, which are essential for its development, its economic efficiency and its international competitiveness," Villarreal said.

She added that without allowing all their human resources access to productive resources, countries will not be able to reduce poverty and hunger.

Ann-Christin Nykvist, Sweden's Minister for Agriculture, Food and Consumer Affairs, said if women were given access to the same education as men, this could lead to "higher returns in terms of world food security."

"Gender equality is essentially an issue of democracy," he said.

Source: Xinhua