Farmer and Woman Farmer.....

Farmer and Woman Farmer.....

I spent half my evening yesterday poring over various dictionaries to find the feminine gender of the word "farmer". My school lessons in grammar on masculine and feminine gender didn't come to my rescue. There used to be something known as the "neuter" gender- neither masculine or feminine. That too had changed to being known as " common" gender now.
Yes the word "farmer" appeared as common gender just like a teacher or a doctor.
We are certainly gender neutral when we think about doctors, they could be male or female . However when we think about teachers it is more often than not female.  And when we think of farmers, in all likelihood we think of a man.
A woman maybe spending a lot of time on the fields , participating in many of agricultural activities from sowing to harvesting. Yet she is never considered as a farmer. She maybe the farmer's wife, sister, daughter or a farm woman but certainly not a farmer.
This is mainly because women are absent at the higher end of the value chain in agriculture. They could be labouring in the fields but are rarely seen in the markets or places of auction. That still remains the forte of the men mainly because average women are not equipped with those skills.

The National Rural Livelihoods Mission therefore came up with the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana, MKSP, which looked at capacitating the technical and management skills of the women through continuous capacity building of the women as farmers. Therein too women farmers had to be christened as "Mahila Kisan".

Under MKSP, women are provided financial support for mechanisation, for purchase of equipments or use of technology suitable to them to reduce their drudgery. This has led to the creation of over 4 lakh women farmers in Maharashtra.
My mind has therefore been in a flurry since yesterday after I attended a meeting to discuss the state annual credit plan and the targets for distribution of crop loan to farmers. There was a mention of small and marginal farmers but women found no place in this discussion. There was no data on the number of women farmers who had received loans. SHG financing was not a part of the discussion. Women from SHGs would certainly be taking loans for agriculture. In fact project proposals by women SHGs for loans are often neglected during the period of distribution of crop loans.
This again brings me to the thought of subsitnece farming wherein the whole family of the farmer maybe working but it is the male who ultimately gets recognised as a farmer and women are relegated to be support providers. So while women's role in farming is largely accepted, it wouod normally be at the lower end of the value chain.
Programmes like NRLM may have brought about a change. Women farmers who are members of SHGs have certainly benefited through capacity building. They have better access to information, they understand input and output, including seed variety, pest management, sorting and grading and moisture content, post harvesting activities etc.
Yet the single most important reason for their recognition of men as farmers is their right and title to land. While a lot of reforms have been made to ensure the names of all the woman of the household are entered into the record of rights yet in reality this is still a distant dream.
Women who hire land for cultivation are therefore not recognised as stakeholders. This is one of the main reasons for women having limited access to finance as the title to property are clearly not theirs.
Access to finance and banking by women therefore gets restricted.
Also their recognition as farmers gets jeopardised due to lack of managerial, mechanical and technical skills. At times norms and traditions are a hindrance , for example women farmers are denied access to auction of farm products in Maharashtra. Also the patriarchal approach of restricting women as helpers or labourer exists. This is due to lack of awareness of the important role women play as farmers and also due to the lack of sensitivity of every stakeholder.
Their ideas on land preparation, cropping patterns, pest management, harvesting, post-harvest, marketing are rarely recognised.

A dual approach of capacitating women and sensitising men should therefore go hand in hand keeping in mind this difference in gendering of agriculture.
The challenges and concerns of women entrepreneurs’ are different from male entrepreneurs. The gaps in participation of women in value chains of selected commodities, their constraints in moving upwards in value chains and in market linkages need to be identified. Special efforts have to be made therefater for their inclusion in every step by designing specific policies and programmes. Empowering women as farners socio-economically will hasten the speed.
Credit plans for agriculture need to consider the specific concerns of women and men and formulate policies for mainstreaming of gender.
Including the participation of women in mainstream agriculture will lead to utilization of the women's potential appropriately leading to the growth in GDP.
It has been proved beyond doubt that women's participation in any economic activity has led to increased growth upto 25 percent.
The need of the hour is to recognise this potential and treat women as major stakeholders in agriculture.

The FAO has stated that, ‘Closing the gender gap in agriculture would generate significant gains for the agriculture and society. If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30 percent and raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 per cent (FAO, 2011).
The standing guidelines for ensuring 30 percent participation of women in all
central sector programmes (DAC, 2011) and the gender budgeting approach of checking what percentage of funds and
benefits are allocated for women and are actually availed by women beneficiaries under each sector are some of the
monitoring mechanisms introduced for enabling the women farmers to access development support and services.
However as pointed out by Geethakutty et al 2014  even Central sector programmes of agriculture such as RKVY do not keep any priority for farm women empowerment

MKSP, the only project specially envisaged for women farmers in the State is being implemented by the Department of Rural Development.
Isn't it high time that some of the real focus in agriculture actually shifts to women farmers? Till then all discussion on credit plan for agriculture would only be mere lip service not only to women but also to society.