Women Farmers

1
Women Farmers

• The effects of the agrarian crisis on the female
  farmers in India.

2

• Importance of female farmers
• What can lead a woman farmer to suicide
• Possible Solutions
• Progress in action

3
Women and Farming in India

• Close to a fifth of rural households are female
  headed
• Women account for
• 90 of those engaged in transplantation
• 76 of those sowing seeds
• 82 of those transporting seeds from field to
  home
• 33 of those who prepare land for cultivation

4
Importance of Female Farmers

• Dual responsibility of economic production and
  domestic labor
• 66 of all women agricultural laborers are dalits
  earning Rs 8 to Rs 25/- per day Battle against
  fear and discrimination, Amnesty International,
  2001.

5
Importance of Female Farmers

• Adilabad- Most active in cotton cultivation,
  followed by pulses and food crops like jowar and
  paddy
• Godavari belt- women played important role in
  paddy cultivation
• Role more pronounced amongst small and marginal
  farmers

6
Women and Farming in India

• Anantapur and Mahbubnagar, Andhra Pradesh lakhs
  of men migrate in search of work
• Leaves women to tend to farming, families, and
  finances
• Bina Agarwals estimates 85 of rural women are
  farmers

7
Perception of Women Farmers

• Farmers wives
• The farmer is a landed male with a patta
• Women not given as much respect for their work on
  the farms

8
Women Farmers Who Commit Suicide- Why?

• Have a position of responsibility
• In position of leadership due to man impairment
  deceased husband, sick son, demented
  father-in-law, etc.
• Banjara community- women generally in-charge of
  land
• High number of suicides amongst women have been
  recorded (Pallavi)
• Level of alcoholism amongst men is high

9
Women Farmers Commit Suicide (contd)

• "A woman who does not have a strong man backing
  her is looked upon with pity, but never with
  respect or trust,"
• "A woman without a man does not get loans,
  labour, credit, anything. No one trusts a woman."
  
• - Shahnaz Karim Khan

10
Women Farmers Commit Suicide (contd)

• Women farmer deaths not recognized as suicide,
  because the property is not under her name
• Eligibility criteria dead farmer should have
  land registered in his/her own or spouses name
• Registration costs, lack of acquaintance with
  official procedures, corruption

11
Women Farmers Commit Suicide (contd)
Title deeds not under womans name.
No official credit for farming
No subsidized inputs
Higher cultivation costs
Private loans with higher interest rates
12
Women Farmers Commit Suicide (contd)

• Men of household committing suicide can also lead
  to women taking their own lives
• Men of household migrating can lead to immense
  pressure on the woman toward suicide
• Domino effect
• dowry issues
• domestic violence
• Children becoming bonded laborers

13
Women Farmers Commit Suicide (contd)

• August 2001- August 2002 311 women suicides in
  Anantapur district alone
• 80 of 311 from villages
• Most of women from farming background

14
Suicide Widows Remain Alone

• National Rural Employment Guarantee Program
  (NREGP) turns away women without male partner
• "The field assistants and project officials
  prefer to deal with groups. If you do not have a
  male partner, they turn you away, assuming you
  cannot do real physical labour. They don't want
  widows. They told me to benefit from this
  scheme, you must be at least a pair of workers.'
  Bandi Lachmamma

15
So Whats the Solution?

• Appropriate woman-friendly technology to ease
  work stress and improve productivity
• Legal and social empowerment by owning land/
  having property rights under their name
• Collection of gender-differentiated information
• Self help groups to expand access to information
• Literacy

16
Through Technology, Women Speak Up

• January 5, 2008 first national virtual congress
  of women farmers.
• Set up by the M.S. Swaminathan Research
  Foundation (MSSRF)
• Women from seven village resource centres (VRCs)
  in Tamil Nadu, Orissa, AP, Rajasthan, and
  Mahrashtra
• expressed the need for feminisation of Indian
  agriculture to hundreds of scientists and policy
  makers.

17
Demands

• Financial and economic reforms - enable women to
  have land ownership
• Asked for modified agricultural implements
• Quality seeds, seed banks and water harvesting
  technology
• Concerns drafted into a charter, presented to the
  government by the MSSRF for inclusion in the
  draft agriculture policy.

18
The Women of Karnataka Speak Up

• Narsenahalli women farming on gomal (low
  quality government wasteland) land for the last
  30 years
• Men migrate for work while women grow groundnut,
  red gram, and ragi
• These women demand to own the title deeds of the
  land they cultivate
• Part of the Karnataka Peoples Forum for Land
  Rights (KPFLR)- formed in 2001 to campaign for
  land reform

19
Survey by the US-based Rural Development
Institute

• Interventions by NGOs have empowered women in
  areas like literacy, access to credit, job skills
  and health
• BUT claims for land ownership rights have not
  significantly increased
• 64 per cent of women polled thought government
  lands should be granted jointly to them and their
  husbands

20
Navdanya

• Women-led organization that trains farmers on the
  importance of seed saving and seed sovereignty.
• Conservation of more than 2000 rice varieties
• Conserved 31 varieties of wheat and hundreds of
  millets, pseudocereals, pulses, oilseeds,
  vegetables and multipurpose plant species
  including medicinal plants.

21
West Bengal Leading the Way

• Burdman, WB- Self-help group buys paddy,
  processes it and sells it to rice mills
• Burdman Zilla Parishad spent Rs. 2 crore to
  develop infrastructure for processing units for
  200 SHGs.
• State government lent Rs. 10 crore to buy paddy
• Rs. 20 crore that would have moved out of rural
  economy is now kept within
• Result 3000 landless members have generated some
  kind of income
• Goal in 2 years SHGs may run rice mills

22
Difference between Maharashtra and West Bengal

• Maharashtra
• withdrew intervention in procurement -gt private
  buyers establish their monopoly
• private moneylenders responsible for more than
  50 of loans given to small/marginal farmers
• West Bengal
• Primary agriculture cooperative societies (PACS)
  get solid support from government
• Membership fee to join PACS- Rs. 1
• Credit recovery rate is 98, 4-7 interest

23
Women-Friendly Technology

• Human-powered hand operated pump designed to pump
  the water from 20 meter depth.
• Water output rate for an adult-20 liter per
  minute.
• Water accessible for both irrigation drinking
  purpose
• Increases the efficiency of water use in
  irrigation

24
March 8, 2008

• International Womens Day
• 400 women from various organisations meet in
  Mettupalayam, Tamilnadu
• "We will not GROW GM Crops, We will Not EAT GM
  FOOD and We will NOT FEED our CHILDREN GM FOOD"
• Workshop organized by Save Our Rice Campaign

25

• The partnership between women and biodiversity
  has kept the world fed through history, at
  present, and will feed the world in the future.
  It is this partnership that needs to be preserved
  and promoted to ensure food security.
• - Vandana Shiva