Leya Chede from Uganda is a women ‘small holder’ family farmer, who like millions others, produces food for herself and her local community. It is women like Leya that hold the key to ensuring that people in hungry countries have a predictable, affordable and secure food supply.

Leya practises sustainable agriculture through a community seed bank project funded by ActionAid. This is the key to feeding the world’s hungry billion.

She and her family of nine previously went hungry, but with the seed bank she can grow surplus maize and groundnuts in a mixed farming system and she now teaches others to do the same.

“When I planted the groundnuts in the first season I harvested 7 bags of groundnuts and 27 bags of maize grains,” she says. “This was to change my life for ever.”

Victoria Ddundu lives in the same drought-prone area of Uganda. Victoria has received no support and is struggling. This video compares the predicament of the two women and shows how support for small scale farmers can transform lives.

Women farmers produce 60-80 per cent of the food in most developing countries and are the main producers of the worlds staple crops rice, wheat and maize providing 90 per cent of the food consumed by the rural poor.

Large scale, market driven agriculture and bad global food policies have ment that over the past decades small holder farmers like Leya have been undermined and even pushed off their land.

Big-business agriculture has been given support and a free-hand by governments. The same big companies that have helped push up global food prices – pushing more people into hunger.

• Download the report ‘Fertile Ground: How governments and donors can halve hunger by supporting small farmers’
• Find out more about Sustainable Agriculture
• Read William's Story: How inadequate public services for smallholder farmers coupled unequal distribution is one of causes of hunger and chronic food insecurity in Kenya