Category: Reflections

Roundtable Dialogue on Innovations and Lessons on what works to empower women farmers.

29th March 2023 | New Delhi, India
What works to empower women farmers? What are the methodologies, innovations, strategies that have worked to empower them?  What are the lessons and challenges encountered in the pathway to enable women farmers to become agents of their own transformative change? Driven by these questions, in March 2023, Digital Green organized a roundtable dialogue in New Delhi; a day of deliberations with experts and development professionals from organizations that engage with women farmers. The dialogue was anchored around deconstructing ‘empowerment’ alongwith strategies, framework and pathways that various organizations have been using to empower women farmers. Additionally a session was dedicated to the discussion on digital innovations used by the participating organizations to empower women collectives.

The dialogue, organized into three thematic sessions, began with context setting by Krishnan Pallassana (Managing Director, Digital Green) with chief address by Mr. Chiranjit Singh, IFoS, Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Rural Development. Krishnan Pallassana in his welcome note emphasized on the primacy of women farmers in the agricultural ecosystem – who are responsible for ensuring employment, food and nutrition security.  While Mr. Chiranjit Singh highlighted the need to contextualize and tailor solutions to build capacities of rural women; striving for innovative solutions with an intersectional lens to harness the power of social media and digital technologies to boost capacity building at scale. The speaker foregrounded the need for collaboration and convergence among ecosystem players, expressing that “the government is keen to explore and utilize the power of digital technologies to empower women farmers through the expansive network of community resource people and grassroots infrastructure.” The session concluded with a screening of a short film of women farmers (that Digital Green has been working with) elaborating on what empowerment meant for them.

 With this, the first round of deliberations were rooted in examining ‘empowerment’ from the lens of women farmers’ lived experiences. The participants explored the fluidity of the term itself and the difficulty to capture the subjective experience of being empowered. The participants underlined that women’s identities are relational and contextual, thus they should not be perceived as homogenous entities. Interventions for empowerment need to be designed to challenge gender inequities and power asymmetries, by facilitating conducive conditions for women to be able to challenge systems and structures to ensure they can thrive in both public and private spaces.  With a concept as fuzzy as empowerment, the participants agreed that it presented its own set of challenges when it came to evaluation or measuring it. Thus a lot of interventions and efforts oscillate between economic development and economic empowerment. 

Another participant highlighted that empowerment, like the woman herself, is a composite of different elements, including identity, agency, autonomy, and literacy, that are critical elements in the pathway to empowerment. The discussants associated choice, negotiation, and decision-making intrinsically with empowerment. The floor agreed that empowerment could mean differently for different women – for some women taking up leadership roles could be empowering; while for another to be able to attend meetings and share their opinions could be empowering. Various organizations concluded that it would be best to continue in their attempts anchored around letting women farmers define what empowerment meant for them, while working on creating better measurement tools and program designs that truly shifts and equalizes power.

The second round table highlighted the deep and expansive work being undertaken with women farmers and women’s collectives in the realm of empowerment. The practitioners elaborated the challenges they faced while working on interventions rooted in empowerment. The challenges led the organizations to rely on economic indicators in their respective interventions. Insights from practitioners highlighted the need to build capacities of women farmers to undertake data-backed business planning and decision making as well as devise strategies to enhance collective agency and critical consciousness to scale empowerment. The floor acknowledged that the content and interventions for women farmers should be mindful of diversity in their contexts and languages with a focus on human mediated delivery while at the same time focussing on simplifying solutions and products. Further emphasis needs to be placed on closing the gender gaps in access to digital resources with creating women centered products that are conscious of women’s unique needs and capabilities. Digital access is a right, and safe spaces should be created to increase technology adoption among women farmers.

For the third roundtable session, research organizations such as ICRISAT, IFPRI, IRRI, and ISST  deliberated on the frameworks and indicators that they have developed to measure women farmers’ economic empowerment. The panel discussed the critical need to view women farmers as a heterogenous group wherein empowerment can not be prescriptive. They acknowledged that measuring empowerment, given its complexity and subjectivity, relying only on quantitative indicators alone posed a critical challenge. The panel highlighted the use of PRO-WEAI & ANEW tools that measure empowerment through intrinsic, instrumental, and collective agency channels. The panelists emphasized the importance of robust qualitative studies to complement quantitative tools based on field experiences. The panel agreed that measuring empowerment requires a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative and ethnographic insights to strengthen quantitative indicators and provide nuanced insights.

The day concluded with an agreement that the grassroot level networks and collaborations must be tapped in to reach the last mile to provide women farmers with access to technology, resources and knowledge. This further requires a convergence among eco-systems including practitioners, experts, researcher organizations as well as private players for collaborative solutions and interventions devised for women farmers.

Digital Green envisioned this event as an ongoing co-learning space that will enable us to hold regular deep dialogues and form an expert group with like-minded organizations. These dialogues will be geared to build a shared vision and strategy for empowerment of women farmers; a space for collaborative learning to use collective power towards making a sincere shift in the lives of the women farmers.

 

Ethiopia has more than 50,000 trained government development agents deployed to provide improved agricultural advisory services. However, records show that one development agent is responsible for training 300 farmers on average, which makes the advisory services delivery difficult and tiresome.1 Digital Green, therefore, is working to combat such problems by digitizing agricultural extension service deliveries. One of the mechanisms being used to deliver customized improved agricultural advisory services to smallholder farmers is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology. The DAAS project, led by Digital Green and implemented in partnership with other organizations, aims to strengthen the existing digital extension services through the deployment of use cases.  The Dairy Use-case of the DAAS project is being implemented by Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD) and utilizes the Agricultural Transformation Institution’s 8028 IVR line to disseminate advisory information. The dairy component of the project focuses on the development and dissemination of advisory content in the areas of artificial insemination (AI), calf & cow management, ration formulation, and climate-smart diary. PAD partnered with 60 Decibels (60dB) in order to understand the uptake, effectiveness, and impact of advisory messages on dairy farming sent via the 8028 IVR call.

The study included interviews with 1,057 dairy farmers in Ethiopia who received advisory messages through the 8028 IVR calls, of which 59% were from the Amhara region. The samples were segmented between primary, secondary, and partial listeners based on their listening rate of the 5 advisory messages delivered through the IVR. Of the interviewed farmers, 41% reported that their quality of life has very much improved due to the IVR service they are getting, of which 28% mentioned that their dairy production has increased, and 19% said they have become able to afford household bills. Listeners valued convenience, ease of understanding, and usefulness of the information. 

The dairy farming advisory information is impactful and leads to tangible improvements with close to 8 in 10 listeners reporting some improvement in their quality of life, their way of farming, and cattle management. Top changes included improved cattle care, feed preparation, and feeding. Female primary listeners were less likely to report the depth of impact: the proportion reporting very much improved. Listeners who were able to apply the IVR advisory in full experienced a better impact than partial listeners. The top reasons they did not fully listen to the call were because they were at work, poor network connectivity, and language barriers. Female partial listeners reported lower levels of satisfaction and a high challenge rate compared to complete listeners.

When it comes to gender-disaggregated findings, female listeners expressed lower understanding, application, and uptake of AI services. While all listeners reported advisory information to be useful, fewer female listeners-particularly female primary listeners- reported ease in understanding, application, and uptake of the information shared. 

“Most of the time women don’t have a radio or anything else to learn from. 8028 helps us improve our knowledge and it is easy to use! I think many women can benefit from this because most of the time they are staying at home. This could be a good method of reaching these women.” – said one of the female secondary listeners, aged 45.

About 9 in 10 male farmers applied information, compared to only 7 in 10 female farmers. Similarly, close to 8 in 10 male farmers use AI services for crossbred cattle, compared to only 65% of female listeners. According to the study, levels of decision-making ability vary by sex and listener groups, and sharing information is also likely to be between members of the same sex in a community forum.  Male listeners are more likely to share information through family gatherings than females, while female listeners are more likely to share the information in one-to-one conversations and village-level community groups compared to males. 

The study recommended that there is an opportunity to increase the reach of women farmers and curate messages to improve female involvement through innovative ways of reaching women with messaging, including encouraging speakerphone use to listen with spouses and family members, and ensuring women are sent messages after 5 PM, given that 9 in 10 of them requested this. Similarly, the study recommends trying another way of reaching partial listeners like making callbacks at a more appropriate time that picks up from where the listener left off could increase retention and application. 

The study also indicated that the project could consider providing messaging around joint decision-making to increase female levels of decision-making ability in the household. The IVR messages should reinforce the need for more equitable distribution of dairy activities within households. Besides female reach, the study recommends additional assistance to deepen the impact of the IVR messaging including encouraging and incentivizing women to share messages with other women in their households and community to increase the impact on farmers not just by interacting with them directly, but also through their family members.  Improving women farmers’ access to financial products could increase the adoption of AI to get crossbred cattle and in turn, potentially increase IVR’s effectiveness is also recommended by the study.

Digital Agricultural Advisory Services (DAAS) project is a five-year project aimed at strengthening digital extension channels in Ethiopia. DAAS, implemented in partnership between Digital Green and Precision Agriculture for Development, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the government of Ethiopia uses digital channels to provide advisory support to smallholder farmers through various digital means.

 

 1 Ethiopia’s 8028 Hotline: Aiding farmers through text and interactive voice messages

In India, women farmers are one of the most marginalized groups, having very limited access to resources, advisories, credit, and technology than their male counterparts. There are many government schemes and policies introduced for the advancement of women with the idea to enhance their capacity, crop yields, and income, to lift them out of poverty. In this order, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare has implemented various programmes for farmers, including women in the agriculture sector. The guidelines of Centrally Sponsored Schemes/Missions such as Support to State Extension Programmes for Extension Reforms under the Sub-Mission on  Agricultural Extension (SMAE), and National Food Security Mission, among others, stipulate that States and other Implementing Agencies are required to earmark at least 30% expenditure on women farmers.

The primary objective of  “Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP),” implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development is to empower women in agriculture by making systematic investments to enhance their participation and productivity, as well as create and sustain agriculture-based livelihoods of rural women. Under the Jharkhand State Rural Livelihood Promotion Society (JSLPS), this project has been implemented in such a manner that the skill base of the women in agriculture is enhanced to enable them to pursue their livelihoods in a sustainable basis.

We say that we need to empower a woman, but being a woman; I believe a woman is born empowered, we just need to be aware of it. We have the power in us to make our own decisions and persuade anyone of what we want to do and what we think is good for us, we just need to apply that power at the right time and place.

This awareness is more visible among rural women after the implementation of the ‘Digital Empowerment to Enhance Productivity’ (DEEP) project on the ground and the ownership of a video-based approach by these women. This project aimed at building the technological skills of frontline workers (FLWs) and farmers, especially women-led farmers organizations (FPOs) and small and marginal farmer collectives. In this order, Digital Green has trained frontline agricultural extension workers to reach small and marginal farmers in community-led digital promotion of improved agricultural practices. This project is generously funded by Accenture CSR Pvt. Ltd. and is being implemented in collaboration with MKSP-JSLPS. The project incorporates Digital Green’s highly acclaimed video-based approach (VBA). VBA involves the development of appropriate content based on formative research, producing short videos to demonstrate the application of new methods, and disseminating the videos to farmers. These video advisories have enhanced the digital literacy of rural women and the PoPs provided to them as an advisory for best practices of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and women collectives to enhance their awareness and knowledge, making their work easier and more effective than earlier. Below are some of the impact stories shared by the women:

1. A woman farmer named Navanti Birua in Jharkhand has taken the initiative to make her own decisions even after being refused many times by her family. In a refresher and planning meeting at Tantnagar block of West Singhbhum district with all the block officials, cadres, and farmers, she happily shared her experience and said that: “I have learned from the video advisory on potato crop and tried it on a small scale to see the difference from traditional farming and I am surprised to see that my potato crop is healthy and grows very fast, where in just a week time the growth is parallel to one-month crop with traditional farming. The yield is also higher which I can compare to the production cost. On my main crop field, I have not treated the seeds and used chemical fertilizers and pesticides for better growth and yield but in my small bari I have sown treated seeds and also used the organic method, which has given me such a great result. Now, my husband and all family members are supporting me so, from next season I will adopt this technique on my whole potato farm field, and I want to give a message to all farmers that this video advisory is very helpful and if it is benefitting me then it will benefit you also.”
2. Similarly, a woman frontline worker named Gudiya, from Chitarpur block in Ramgarh district, who is the Aajeevika Krishak Sakhi (AKS) in Murubanda village is sharing knowledge on agricultural activities with farmers through videos. She spoke in a cadres meeting that this new digital technology has made her work easier. More farmers are now understanding, believing in the video advisories, and adopting them, which before was difficult by giving verbal training at community meetings, and also there was the extra effort of needing to explain all the advisories in practical terms. Now, farmers are also demanding other farming videos to be shown in the meeting as they found these videos interesting and relevant to their work. As a result, Gudiya is disseminating these videos in more community meetings and gatherings, and gaining respect among community members.
   
3. A farmer named Kiran Devi in Kurhagarha village, Katkamsandi block from Hazaribagh district has adopted Natural Pest Management (NPM) practices for potato crop cultivation. She is happy to see the results and shared that her potato plants are grown thicker than earlier and growth is also fast. She also noticed that by using regular and systematic techniques, as per the video advisory, there was no pest attack on her crop. When she decided to adopt the practice, her family members agreed with her but some people in the village were making fun of her that her crop would be at risk and saying; Why are you trying these new things? You will bear loss this season because you are not using traditional methods, which we have been doing for years. But she replied that “whatever happens, will happen with my crop and I would be responsible for it and if there is any loss, it would be my loss. So I will take risks and try this new method because I believe in it.” But after the positive results, everyone was surprised and told her that they will also adopt this method and that if their family refused, they will point to her as an example.
4. AKMs from Bishungarh block in Hazaribagh district took ownership of the VBA in their work after being trained on video dissemination as master trainers, and they shared the learnings among all the AKS in the block-level video dissemination training. They shared their experience in a community meeting and said that this approach has made their work easier and more effective. Rita Devi from Bedahariyara said: “From the time I started disseminating farming videos in our village, I have seen an increase in the number of farmers attending meetings and adopting these new techniques. This also helped in building trust and respect among farmers for my work and efforts.”  A few AKMs who took training from her also said that: “Earlier we used to explain to the farmers many times and adoption was less because they didn’t find the method authentic and if some of them tried to adopt the NPM practices, we had to make that practical for their understanding. That was increasing our efforts and comparatively less adoption was happening. But now, we are happy that we got this new idea of sharing our knowledge through digital tools. We are happy that we got such impressive tools that made our work so easy and effective.” Some farmers also said that they are now using video advisories in their crop fields and are excited to see the results. They have used NPM practices for seed treatment, irrigation, and disease and pest management. Also, they have used line sowing in cultivating mustard and wheat crops this season and found that the method has increased plant growth and given more yield compared to the traditional method.
5. Twelve farmers from Piska village, Nagdi block in Ranchi district, adopted the video advisory on Mustard PoP in group farming to increase production. They got 24 kg of black mustard seeds at a 100% subsidized rate under the National Food Security Mission and targeted for more yield than earlier, so after seeds distribution to farmers; the block team and AKS of that village decided to do group farming in a patch of 5.5 acres of land as the plots of those farmers are nearby and chose to adopt the CSA video advisories for mustard farming. They found it easier to do all the farming-related activities on time and convenient to look after the crop properly. This group farming also gave confidence to farmers to bear the minimum loss and do their work effectively with the help of each other, see the difference from traditional farming methods, and the impact of these advisories on the ground. They did all the practices starting from a seed treatment with Beejamrit, land preparation, line sowing, weeding, disease, and pest management using natural fertilizers and pesticides, and timely irrigation from Jeevamrit until harvesting, as had been shown in the video. It has demonstrated better results compared to the traditional farming method as farmers and the block team observed 55 kg yield per kg of seeds i.e.; 5kg (10%) more yield with this PoP, which was earlier 50kg yield per kg of seeds with traditional practices for black mustard. Because the crop growth was faster and not infected with any disease or pest, farmers are now delighted with the high yield and healthy crop, and they decided to adopt the same technique in their individual farm fields. Similarly, a few of them cultivated yellow mustard in their individual farm fields and observed 20% more yield i.e 60 kg yield per kg seeds, which was earlier 50 kg per kg of seeds.
6. Farmers from Balumath block in Latehar district shared that they are now easily adopting NPM practices with the help of video advisories disseminated in their community meetings and facilitated effectively by AKSs. As the NPM practices have been promoted for years by the government, AKSs used to share the knowledge with farmers in their respective villages but every time a farmer decided to adopt this, AKSs had to prepare those organic manures and pesticides for them to understand the full method. But after the video advisories were implemented, most of the farmers adopted these NPM practices just after watching the videos and when additional support is needed in preparing these, they just watch the videos again on their smartphones and do it. Only those farmers who don’t have access to smartphones are seeking help from AKSs and other neighbour farmers who have adopted this earlier.
7. Laxmi Kumari, an AKS from Lupung village in Katkamsandi block of Hazaribagh district is using Pico and WhatsApp groups for sharing and disseminating video-based crop advisories in her village-level community meetings. She shared that after using these digital tools for video advisories the adoption has increased among farmers: “As the advisory is localized and time specific, farmers found it authentic and easy to understand and this has built a self-confidence in me to do my work more efficiently.” Where before she was approaching farmers individually to give crop advisory and adoption by them, and now farmers are calling her to visit their crop fields and see the benefits of adoption. 
   She is delighted that now there is no need of visiting the farmers many times for a single advisory, as they can go through the videos shared on WhatsApp and can clear their doubts, only minimal telephonic support and observation are needed. There is also an increase in farmers attending community meetings to see videos and farmers have taken initiative to share the advisories with each other as they are experiencing fruitful results.
8. Rural community members and farmers from 3 different districts in Jharkhand (West Singhbhum, Gumla, and Simdega) have been trained in video production modules and become Video Resource Persons (VRPs) who are producing community videos on improved agricultural practices. These VRP team members also shared that they are happy and excited to produce videos, which would further be used in community training. They are proud that they would be contributing to the knowledge transfer of best practices to the farmers for better yield and income, which they will be documenting. This new work is encouraging and exciting for them, where they could not even come out of their home for work, now they are traveling to different villages for shooting, meet with new people and even convincing them to provide their time and work as actors in the videos. They are now confident about continuing with their work and producing videos on Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and Sustainable Agriculture (SA) practices.

It was great to see the way they happily shared their stories, which led me to visit their farm fields and observe community video disseminations to observe the facilitation of AKSs and adoption results by the farmers. These stories of empowered women are inspiring and encouraging regarding the impact of the digital revolution and the adoption of CSA practices among rural women. The changes have made them confident in making their own decisions and living life with their own identity and respect.

In Ethiopia, Digital Green, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), is piloting the digital farmer registry which aims to empower the country’s agricultural extension capacity and impact by facilitating demand-driven extension and advisory services. Digital Green created a user-friendly application and web portal that allows government functionaries, mainly development agents (DAs), to—among other parameters—collect demographic and farm-level data from the farmers in their communities, participation in extension meetings, practice adoption, and even demand for agricultural inputs. The application also offers a wide range of features that allows DAs to generate and automate reports and is expected to significantly reduce the DAs’ effort spent on data collection and report writing, which accounts for up to 20% of their time (Berhane et. al, 2018). 

Digital Green trained about 60 development agents who went on to use the application in four woredas in Amhara, Oromia, and SNNPR in May 2022.  The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) conducted a process evaluation and published a project note on this first stage of the pilot, where they identified the following results:

 

• Most of the DAs from the pilot implementation were using the application independently by the time of the assessment; more than half stated they had trained other DAs on using the application. DAs highly recommended the training with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 90%.
•  Both DAs and woreda-level functionaries show strong interest in the application, highlighting the relevance of modules for data collection that aligns with their daily activities, which they can use to customize their extension and advisory services. The application received an NPS of 88% on relevance.
• At the time of the IFPRI evaluation, the DAs who participated in the training had registered over 13,800 farm households during the first 3-4 months. Most DAs reported being able to comfortably use the application on a daily basis without the need for additional support.
• While it was early to measure the impact of the Farmer Registry application on DAs’ work, IFPRI asked DAs about their perception of the application’s potential benefits. Most DAs responded in the affirmative that the digital farmer registry has the potential to reduce their workload (82%), help them focus on extension activities (93%), improve data generating and sharing (94%), help them easily access farmer’s data (97%), improve timely reporting (90%) and enable them to be more autonomous (95%) (Abate et. al, 2023).
• At the same time, IFPRI identified several challenges Digital Green is addressing via the scaleup of the pilot. These include data quality issues (discrepancies that might be due to DAs initially digitizing existing paper records); limited institutional support from the bureau of agriculture, gaps in effectively communicating the purpose of the registration to farmers, unreliable network reception in remote locations, hardware (tablet) limitations, and the intensive level of effort required to initially register farmers.

Based on the results of the initial pilot phase described in IFPRI’s evaluation, the MoA approved the expansion of the digital farmer registry pilot to another two woredas and all kebeles within the previous and new woredas for a grand total of 132 kebeles in six woredas, with an additional 200 DAs trained in the application. Digital Green expects this second phase of the pilot to result in approximately 80,000 farmer profiles completely digitized and available on the registry, a significant step to leveraging technology to improve extension service provision, leading to better livelihoods for smallholder farmers in Ethiopia.

 

 

References:

Berhane, G., Ragasa, C., Abate, G.T. and Assefa, T.W., 2018. The state of agricultural extension services in Ethiopia and their contribution to agricultural productivity. Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Sebsibie, Samuel; Ketema, Dessalegn Molla; and Abate, Gashaw Tadesse. 2023. Digital farmer registry and tailored extension and advisory services in Ethiopia: A process evaluation. IFPRI Project Note February 2023. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.136603

Emuye Muche, a 40 years old resident of Korata Kebele in Ethiopia is a mother of five children whose livelihood depends on the agricultural products she gets from her one acre of land, one cow, and five hens. Emuye started attending video dissemination sessions back in 2021 when the Development Agent set the session for the development group she is a part of at her house. Since then, Emuye has attended video dissemination sessions on poultry production, vermicomposting, maize side dressing, maize sowing, compost, urea molasses block preparation, PICS bag, nutrition, and vegetable production. She said: “what changed my life is the vermicompost preparation training, which was my first practice in video extension. I was surprised with the produced compost displayed in the video, which had a very attractive dark brown color like roasted coffee powder, my favorite powder. I learned from the video that it can replace Urea fertilizer, which is useful for vegetable and other crop productions. I learned that the production bed was prepared with local material at a shadowy place to prevent direct sunlight and predator birds from eating the worms. I also understood that all the materials for this compost preparation are not from outside of our area but are locally available materials.” home.”

As a result, she began preparing vermicompost at home and recalled: “My elder son and I prepared ourselves to practically implement the activity. The first thing we did was collect cow dung from the field. Then, I prepared the composting bed in my backyard and brought the worms to start and manage them. I remember that the initial numbers of worms that I used were 22 in number but thanks to God, I currently have thousands, and recently, I distributed them to 12 farmers who are willing to adopt the practice.”  

Emuye began compost harvesting about 1 and a half years ago and has been utilizing it for her backyard vegetables, fruits, and maize productions. She stated that she applied the compost immediately after harvest and cannot remember the exact amount of production, but that it is estimated beyond 65 Qt. She applied it for lettuce, cabbage head, and Swiss chard last year and understood that it is more important for vegetables and can replace inorganic fertilizer. Emuye shared: “this year I used the compost mainly for Greenhouse Tomato production and maize farms. My farm soil was acidic and it was very difficult for me to produce maize even though utilizing inorganic fertilizer. But now, thanks to the vermicompost, I have grown my maize to 0.125 ha and the difference is visible. As a result of the vermin fertilizer, I have saved 2500 ETB that I used to spend to buy artificial fertilizers.  My backyard farm used to be bare due to the acidity problem and knowledge gap, but now you can see my farm full of tomatoes and my living status has improved”  She also said that her son is interested in attending the video dissemination sessions even though he is not part of the development group and is supportive of her effort to adopt the improved agricultural practices she learned from the videos. 

 

Who is a farmer?

“We have always been farmers, and we have been doing things individually for a long time, but this is the first time we have gotten together and realized what can be accomplished as a group, whether it is in sharing knowledge, or identifying, and working through our challenges, or even farming practices.”

On a daily basis, farmers wear multiple hats to keep running our food systems. These are farmers that have the onus upon them to ensure rural productivity, rural livelihoods, food security, and contribute heavily to building the rural economy. Women in agriculture play a pivotal role and are engaged in multiple roles such as that of cultivators, laborers, entrepreneurs, etc. In India, 85% of rural women are engaged in agriculture, and 75% of full time workers in agriculture are women, and yet their voices often go unheard due to factors such as pre-dominant land ownership by men, and patriarchal gender norms.

To mitigate these inequalities and systemic gendered issues in agriculture, over the years, farmer groups have become a lighthouse. Women-led and women-centered farmer groups in particular have provided a space for women farmers to collectivize and build a mutual support system through which they can become socially and economically stronger which contributes to their bargaining power, and agency. Ultimately, reaping the benefits of this involvement can bring them a return on their investment.

ATLAS (Advancing Tribal Livelihoods and Self Reliance) has been one of our first projects at Digital Green that focuses on working with tribal women farmer groups, in adivasi and particularly vulnerable tribal communities, in Jharkhand and Odisha towards making them self-reliant. Through targeted advisories, leadership coaching and our Kisan Diary Enterprise (KDE) solution that supports farmer-level data for demand aggregation, ATLAS strengthens women farmer producer groups and improves their bargaining power with buyers. 

What does it mean to be a part of a collective?

During a field visit to Jharkhand, we were able to interact with two producer groups in Namkum and Latehar, that were previously women’s self-help groups, and get a glimpse into their journey to where they are now. More than individual women farmers becoming champions of change within these respective communities, what was evident was the power of collective agency. These producer groups have become a pillar of support whenever these women need support with input mobilization, capacity building, knowledge sharing, and product aggregation etc. Coming together, these women farmers recognize that working collectively is helping them enhance their leadership skills and realize the economies of scale. 

Participatory videos have played a significant role in empowering women farmers with knowledge, and building their confidence and ownership in being a part of producer groups. A frontline worker (FLW) reflected, “we used to show videos to introduce a concept that they could put into practice, but farmers would come to us with operational challenges on how their experiences and the results they obtained are different from the expected outcomes.” With varied inputs from farmers, video producers used to also face challenges on whether to continue with the chain of content, or develop new content for conflict resolution. With producer groups, this issue has been addressed for both FLWs and women farmers as they are given the space to share these challenges, experiences, and knowledge with one another. In this process, VRPs also become a part of the road map during the course of their discussions with producer groups, thereby forming an organic learning loop.

A woman farmer shared, “we are now able to gather enough produce collectively that we can sell and also keep for our own consumption. Each member contributes however much they can.” Most women farmers that we spoke to and asked about what being a part of a producer group meant to them, responded along the lines of collectivization. By being a part of these producer groups, women farmers are able to get support in crop advisories, procure inputs and also in post-production practices by collecting, processing and selling the produce. 

The enterprising vision was especially evident in our interaction with the producer group that we met in Latehar, Jharkhand. This is a producer group that was formed in 2016, and they have been trained and mobilized on this front. When asked about how they bifurcate and sell their produce, they had a clear response – “out of 45 members in our producer group, there are 15 of us who have surplus produce, mainly of pulses and mustard seeds, to collect and sell to the market. We discuss the surplus available with the group members in our PG meetings, and as needed we also go home to home to understand what each farmer can provide.” What stood out were discussions around the return of investment for these women group members; one woman farmer stated “we paid a one-time membership fee of Rs. 310, and were able to get support on seeds, fertilizers and input mobilization by being a part of the producer group. Before we used to work in silos, but now by getting our produce together, we are now able to sell to the market and get a better price.” As a group, they have noticed that they are not dependent on traders to take their produce to the market anymore.

A key factor in addressing inequalities for women farmers on ground is market access, and getting competitive prices. The entire reason for farming is markets, and yet there still remains price disparities and access-related issues. While digital technologies have become essential in connecting farmers to markets, it only widens the gender gap as social inequalities are often manifested in digital inequalities. Being a part of producer groups is also partially solving access-related issues – Namkum and Latehar had varied levels of digital connectivity. Being closer to the capital, there were more women farmers in Namkum with mobile phones, and in Latehar only 5 to 6 women farmers in the group had personal mobile phones, while others would rely on the family-owned phones. In both cases, being a part of a group and having discussions around information received and shared was a big plus.

In the context of ATLAS, digital connectivity goes beyond advisories and into more complex concepts such as farmer-level data entry and demand aggregation. As members of the producer group we met in Namkum were more digitally connected, and were also trained on using Kisan Diary Enterprise, we were able to discuss issues that farmers face when sharing their information, whether they ask questions regarding the process, and what challenges they still face. With digital data repositories on KDE, producer group members are able to visualize the quantum of product available and could explore alternate marketplaces for collective selling. By selling their produce as a collective, they are now stronger in their bargaining power and do not face pricing and weighing malpractices that they used to face before when they used to sell individually. On the data collection side, KDE has helped producer group (PG) officers  in realizing the ease and reliability of the process as compared to how it was when they would maintain physical registers of farmers’ data. Priyanka, a VRP in Namkum shares “With KDE, in one place, we are able to access and generate farmer-level data for the producer groups that can be accessed securely. On the app we can also see what videos PG members have watched, and how long they have watched this.” 

Video cadres who collect farmer level data also reflect that farmers are hesitant of sharing their data as they are not aware of how it could be used. The process of explaining to farmers on why this data is useful and how it could be beneficial is also something to account for. 

“Sometimes there are concerns raised on meeting farmers’ expectations when we are unable to meet basic business needs,” says one PG officer, “we collect data and the produce from farmers who have enough to sell, and then keep it in cold storage until we can get a good price for the produce. Until we are able to sell the produce, there are a lot of costs associated with inventory, staffing, and transportation, and it’s very discouraging if a farmer needs money and they are not getting it because of this issue.”  The channel of distribution is on the basis of FPO demand, but even FPOs are not empowered with the information they need to be able to get the best market value for the given product. 

A promising road ahead

The vision of monetary profit is known to all women farmers in the producer groups, and more so is the sense of individual and collective identity that they are building together as women farmers. However, there are still gaps identified on clear communication and contextualized knowledge transfer on ground, particularly, on the larger implications of producer groups as business enterprises.

There is now an immense opportunity to encash on what kind of knowledge we are providing. We have to base knowledge sharing on ground to what their needs are and social contexts. An example of this is by showcasing videos of women in leadership through success stories of inspirational women leaders, awareness videos, instructional videos on how to negotiate with buyers, and more that would fit the contexts of the groups that they are being shared with.

When talking about farmer-level data, and agtech, we must understand that along with all the other hats that a smallholder farmer wears on a daily basis, we are also expecting her to be digitally savvy. That’s when the realization hits that making farmers digitally connected to increase productivity and income is not just an end, but also a process. If a producer group is not yet at a stage of having an entrepreneurial mindset and vision, how do we disseminate knowledge and build their capacities chronologically so that they have that vision? Therefore, knowledge transfer, introducing farmers to complex concepts such as data, and making them realize that their information is powerful has to be in a stage-wise progression.

As Digital Green moves forward with its new strategy, we are increasingly encouraging discussions across all levels around farmer-level data, and building farmers’ capacities in realizing the value of their data to build resilient livelihoods, and prosperous communities. This is a part of our larger vision of digitized farmer networks that finally puts farmers at the center of agtech and agdata discourse.

 

About the Project:

This project is generously funded by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of an initiative to support racial and ethnic justice globally. In Jharkhand, the project is implemented in partnership with Jharkhand Livelihoods Promotion Society (JSLPS), under the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) program, which is a subcomponent of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission to empower women farmers. 

Women leaders are a major focus of the ATLAS project. The project pairs scalable and high quality agricultural and post-harvest advisory, and mobile coaching with our  FPO strengthening and data sharing solution – Kisan Diary Enterprise (KDE) to enable women leaders to negotiate in the market and fetch competitive prices for women-led producer groups. 

KDE is a digital tool that also supports FPOs with buyer discovery and aggregation of commodities for sale in addition to transparent data sharing.

Sabita Devi, a frontline worker (FLW) in Latehar, Jharkhand, is one such user of KDE. With this application, she keeps a track of the produce being collected or yet to be collected from the member farmers of the village level producer group. She shares that “through this mobile application, maintaining and reporting the produce data to our FPO has become very easy. I collect and feed the data in the mobile app during the meeting with farmers. Through this app, I have access to complete  produce data (including the break-up of produce for self-consumption, other commitments, and surplus for selling to producer groups or FPOs) for each of the farmers in one place.”

Pushpa Tigga (Ranchi, Jharkhand) is also using KDE and is quite happy with the ease of inventory management solution that this application offers. She shared “earlier we used to collect the produce data in paper-based formats, in the designated registers within producer groups, which were further shared with the FPO officials. Getting the format xeroxed and reaching all the way to the FPO office for the submission was really a tiring exercise, particularly when these records required very frequent updations, because of the collectivisation of multiple products in a season, with slightly different harvest timelines. Now, we enter the data in coordination with farmers during producer group and village organization level meetings and also visit the farmers in person, and the same data collected could be accessed by the FPO officials on a real-time basis. With this digital tool, our work has gotten easier and we are able to deliver our work more effectively.”

The use of KDE started very recently in Jharkhand and is well-received by the FPOs. FPO managers are very happy to get the digitized data in one place for all of the produce available through different producer groups in their areas. Mr Ankit (Block Program Manager, MKSP-JSLPS, Latehar, Jharkhand) who is the in-charge of Latehar Farmer Producer company shared “Latehar FPO is the nodal FPO in Jharkhand which supplies processed pigeon pea to Palash (a marketing initiative of JSLPS and Department. of Rural Development, Government of Jharkhand). We had a plan of procuring 80 metric tonnes of Mustard and Pigeon pea during this season. It would have really been a challenge to follow up with over 60 producer groups on the same. Thanks to KDE, I am able to track the produce collectivization in one place.

Md. Affan (Block Coordinator, Kolebira-Simdega, MKSP-JSLPS) is responsible for handholding and managing the Kolebira Farmer Producer Company. He mentioned that “Farmers in our area primarily grow paddy, millets and black gram and maize and the FPO is supporting these farmers in marketing the surplus of this produce. Getting the estimates of surplus produce from all the producer groups was a troublesome and time-consuming exercise. With KDE, this has been eased out. We have an FPO-level dashboard, from which we access all the data on a real-time basis. The dashboard provides us with an option to see the producer group-wise break-up of product data, and also has the option to see up to individual farmer level entry, enabling us to quickly follow up with the point person at producer groups.”

Under the ATLAS project in Jharkhand, 6 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)  from 4 districts are the focus of our interventions. These FPOs are all women-led FPOs, have a great representation of tribal women members, and are also being promoted under Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Priyojana (MKSP), a subcomponent of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission in India aimed at empowering women farmers. In partnership with Jharkhand State Livelihoods Promotion Society (JSLPS), in Jharkhand, Digital Green is working to advance the livelihoods, resilience and self-determination in the Adivasi tribe communities, and foster the recovery from the economic effects of COVID-19 by strengthening women farmer producer organisations and their bargaining power.

This project is also being implemented in Odisha, and over the life of the project, ATLAS will reach 50,000 women with targeted advisories and improve women’s FPO participation in group sales.

Note: This project is generously funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of an initiative to support racial and ethnic justice globally. Digital Green implements this project with the support of various state and district-level agencies.

Women are the backbone of agriculture in India, and that is no exaggeration. They play a pivotal role in agriculture: 85% of rural women in our country are engaged in agricultural activities, and 75% of the farmers in the agriculture field are women. In addition, women are also responsible for the majority of household chores, such as cooking and taking care of children. Despite their efforts, they are hardly recognised as farmers and in most the communities, d power largely lies with the men of the household. Women have restricted mobility, and require permission from their elders and husband. Their stake in intra-household decision making still remains a grey area and is a deep-rooted issue that needs to be worked upon.

Agency and leadership of women farmers a critical to b resilience in agriculture. With this objective, Digital Green’s Advancing Tribal Livelihoods and Self Reliance (ATLAS) project, funded by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is being implemented in Odisha and Jharkhand where tribal communities make up nearly 50% of the population. 

In Jharkhand state, Digital Green (DG) in partnership with Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society (JSLPS) has been implementing the ATLAS project in the state under the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) program, which is a subcomponent of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission to empower women farmers. 

Our concerted efforts have been towards advancing the livelihoods, resilience and self-determination of tribal women farmers by strengthening the capacity of women-focused Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) to navigate market opportunities. Towards this, v frontline workers (FLWs) have been trained in community video production and dissemination skills for further building the capacities of women farmers. They have also been trained on other digital tools for knowledge transfer and for managing the inventory of the village level producer groups.

Sabita Devi (FLW, Latehar, Jharkhand State, India) shares that “Video content is easy for farmers to understand, where they can relate to practice in a way that it is doable for them, and we are not training them with any alien content or concepts.  I disseminate videos using a PICO projector during various community meeting platforms (producer group meetings, SHG (s group) meetings etc.) around season-based crop advisories, non-pesticidal management practices, and also around topics related to producer groups and FPOs. Producer group members in my village are now better at understanding the intent of these community institutions, moreover, they have started owning it and are taking charge o the activities.’ 

The Community Video approach has been Digital Green’s flagship solution wherein we train frontline workers to produce and disseminate videos, themselves. It is owned by the community from start to finish. Under the ATLAS project, 3 teams of video resource persons (VRPs) have been trained, for creating hyper-local video content for various videos, which enables more efficient dissemination of information by the FLWs and greater adoption of practices by the farmers.

By empowering the women community leaders, and FLWs, for effective knowledge dissemination, their capacities have been built around operating a PICO projector for video dissemination and also facilitation skills. Over 170 trained FLWs from the 6 FPO, operational villages are now using PICO based dissemination sessions for knowledge transfer amongst their respective communities. 

These FLWs have also been trained on using other available digital tools for content dissemination, and currently over 500 such FLWs are using WhatsApp as an alternate digital channel to disseminate content. They are creating Whatsapp groups with women farmers associated with v producer groups and sharing relevant video content with them on a fortnightly basis.

Radha Devi (FLW, Hazaribag, Jharkhand) shares video content with her fellow farmers through WhatsApp-based dissemination using her own mobile device, in a smaller group of farmers. She mentioned “Now, for the first time we are using mobile phones for our w activities. I have formed a WhatsApp group of farmers associated with a producer group in my village, and share videos with the same group at periodic intervals. For the farmers who do not have access to smartphones (even a shared one), and to reiterate the message to all the farmers, I also conduct video dissemination sessions using my mobile, with a smaller group of farmers, mostly during the SHG meetings. Farmers find this to be an engaging and interesting way of knowledge transfer, where they also get the videos in their mobile (through WhatsApp) for quick reference at any later time.”

During the project cycle (July 2021 to Dec 2022), in Jharkhand and Odisha states where the project is being implemented, we aim to reach over 50,000 tribal women farmers with advisories around best practices on various crop cultivation, NPM, and producer group/FPO related topics, thereby building their capacity on crop production, post-production & value addition activities and negotiation skills for increase value proposition for farmers.