Female farmers in India feed their families despite devastating climate change

Women play a crucial role in global food production. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, female agricultural workers are responsible for over fifty percent of all food production worldwide. Women who work in agriculture often collaborate and share knowledge about new trends and techniques, some of which have proven to help communities adapt to the devastating effects of climate change. However, women do not receive sufficient support for their roles as agricultural workers. To prepare for a changing climate, government institutions, research organizations, and other stakeholders urgently need to start incorporating women’s knowledge into their climate adaptation and development work.

In a recent article published in the March 2018 edition of World Development, Dr. Anamika Dey of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) and a team of researchers surveyed farmers’ adaptive strategies and loss of crop species in the rural communities of Eastern India. In these communities, most farmers cultivate rice (paddy) in the floodplains. On the floodplains of the Sarayu River, the villages of Isoulibhari, Shivnathpur, and Kharella face the challenges of a changing climate. These rice-growing villages must adapt to more frequent crop failures as a result of variations in the rainy season.

The researchers conducted 631 in-home surveys and 15 group interviews with women working in paddy cultivation. They also analyzed 25 years of data from the Narendra Dev University of Agriculture and Technology to understand the changes in region’s climate. The researchers studied the relationship between temperature and rain, since delays in the rainy season and increased temperatures are altering the traditional cycles of paddy cultivation. For instance, if the rainy season ends too late, women have less time to harvest the crops before the next planting cycle. This forces the women to collect crops before they are fully mature.    

The women in this study participate in the entire paddy cultivation process, from working in the nursery, to transplanting, to weeding, to storing seeds, and to processing crops. They are experts in paddy cultivation and know the surrounding natural environment like no one else. Besides this, they understand the nutritional and medicinal properties of the plants they find in the wild, as well as those they are harvesting during the paddy cultivation process. As a result of this, the women have been using weeds like the kermuha plant – a very nutritious water spinach found in ponds – to supplement their families’ diets, which is especially beneficial for children and pregnant women.

In the study area, one of the ways in which these women pass knowledge down between generations is through folk songs. While transplanting in the paddy fields, women sing to manage the physical pain from hours of exhausting work. In many of their songs, women share information about specific nutritious plants that are resistant to climate variations. “If I could get enough millets, I will not need even milk or butter…” women sing while working, raising awareness of the nutritional superiority of millet, a plant that grows on the edges of paddy ponds borders. As the weather and seasons become harder to predict, this type of information helps women secure food and proper nutrition for their families. 

The study also found that the women share material goods and services with each other, such as seeds, farm equipment, food, and even labor to help those struggling in the varying climate. Notably, this culture of sharing goes beyond caste or class, rarely involves money, and is often reciprocal. When women lose their crops due to drought, they exchange their labor for young plants grown by farmers with access to irrigation. Men are rarely involved in these transactions. Researchers observed that these forms of collaboration build trust, a sense of belonging in areas where men migrate, and strengthen women’s communication. All of these exchanges favor the creation of informal networks among women. Such networks are effective platforms for information and resource sharing to cope with seasonal variability, thus, contributing to build climate change resilience of the studied communities.  

This article proves that female agricultural workers play key roles in climate adaptation. Policy makers and institutions must better understand and recognize the contributions of these women and incorporate them into climate change action plans. One way that governments could support female agricultural workers is by establishing platforms where women can formally exchange goods and share knowledge with each other. Additionally, they could direct government subsidies and resources to build up existing informal networks and develop gender-specific adaptation policies. By integrating women’s expertise and strengths, institutions would not only improve climate adaptation strategies, but would help entire communities survive to overwhelming impacts of climate change.