Improving training programs for women farmers in central India
A recent study examined how training programs for Indian women working in agriculture can be improved. ETH student Alicia Luther found that effective trainings should be held in a participative and demand-driven way. A participative methodology is key to include participants’ topics of interest, making the potential for adoption higher.
Women working in agriculture continue to face inequalities across the globe. The inequality is even bigger for women from marginalized groups such as poor or indigenous people1. One popular way to relieve these inequalities is by agricultural extension services, which try to support women and marginalized groups in enhancing their livelihoods and general food security. In recent years, such extension services have been proven to be particularly effective when they are tailored to participants’ needs and adapted to their specific situations2.
Trainings in India are still exclusive and one-size-fits-all
Although the Indian government has a goal of making agricultural extension services that are inclusive to all and tailored to the needs of marginalized groups, access still remains limited for women, smallholders, and marginal farmers. Furthermore, training programs usually still adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, teaching the same content in the same way to all participants. Training programs are often not adapted for different participants3,4.
Finding ways to improve training programs
bioRe Association and Remei India Ltd. are trying to bring demand-driven extension programs into practice. These organisations give trainings to cotton farmers in central India and are a partner of FiBL’s SysCom India project. In recent years many efforts have been made to improve the trainings and develop innovative training programs for bioRe farmers. However, these initiatives remain exclusive and follow the one-size-fits-all approach. Supported by FiBL and TdLab, ETH Zurich student Alicia Luther had the opportunity to take a closer look at bioRe’s trainings. Her main research question was how can training programs become more effective in supporting women farmers, taking into account their gender and socio-economic background?
As part of Alicia’s bachelor thesis, she travelled to India and participated in participatory workshops focused on discussions around the current trainings. Women from three socio-economic groups were chosen: tribal farmers (typically smallholders), labourers (who typically don’t own land and work for other farmers) and non-tribal farmers (often big landowners). Expert interviews with women trainers supplemented the inputs from the workshops.
Make it participatory
The main results reveal that current bioRe trainings are, as expected, less accessible for marginalized groups: labourers cannot participate because they do not own land, and tribal farmers struggle to participate because the training organization does not fit well to their schedule and mobility options. To make the trainings more accessible, it is important to include labourers as receivers of extension and to adapt training schedules to match participants’ preferences, with a priority for groups with lower access.
Once all groups can join the program, different measures can be taken to make trainings more effective. Trainings should be held in a participative and demand-driven way, so that participants can learn through hands-on activities. Furthermore, they can participate in decisions about the trainings’ organization or topics. For example, when asked, the women did not request trainings in technical agronomical methods, as men often do. Instead, they wanted to learn more about managing their family’s and their own well-being. A participative methodology is key to include participants’ topics of interest, making the potential for adoption higher.
Next steps
If participants can decide on what they want to learn, the training topics might certainly change and possibly be outside the capacity of extension services- be that how to create small enterprises to information about fertility and menstruation. Further study is now needed to discover why trainings are currently not more participative and what are the barriers to change. All this work then helps to create effective, inclusive, and demand-driven extension programs in practice.
For more information on the SysCom project in India: external page https://systems-comparison.fibl.org/project-sites/india.html
References
1 Team, S., & Doss, C. (2010). The Role of Women in Agriculture. www.fao.org/economic/esa
2 Davis, K. (Kristin E., Babu, S. C., & Ragasa, C. (2020). Agricultural extension : global status and performance in selected countries. IFPRI.
3 Babu, S. C., Babu, S. C., Joshi, P. K., & Sulaiman, V. R. (2019). Agricultural extension reforms: lessons from India. Agricultural Extension Reforms in South Asia: Status, Challenges, and Policy Options, 41–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818752-4.00003-5
4 Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. (2018). Agriculture extension system in India : review of current status, trends and the way forward.