ICAR-Central Institute for Women in Agriculture looks into problems and issues

Government of India has already set up an institute, ICAR-Central Institute for Women in Agriculture, at Bhuvaneshwar, Odisha under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi to address the problems and issues of the women in agriculture. The institute carries on research on Women in Agriculture to identify gender issues in agriculture and advice interventions to tackle the same.

A total 704 number of capacity building programmes for farm women were run by ICAR-CIWA and All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Home Science engaging 31,626 farm women during 2015-20.

The Government has also installed 722 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) in the nation with mandate of technology assessment and demonstration for its application and capacity development. As part of their activities, the KVKs provide training to farmers including female farmers on a number of aspects of agriculture and related sectors.

The KVKs also organize female farmer specific training programmes on several topics such as household food security by kitchen gardening & nutrition gardening; Design and development of low/minimum cost diet; Designing and development for high nutrient efficiency diet; Minimization of nutrient loss in processing; Processing and cooking; Gender mainstreaming through self-help groups (SHGs); Storage loss minimization techniques; Value addition; Women empowerment; Location specific drudgery lowering technologies; Rural Crafts; and Women and child care.

During last year, 5358 women specific trainings were conducted by the KVKs in which about 1.23 lakh female farmers took part. Furthermore, 5.50 lakh women farmers also participated in other 57,757 training programmes along with male farmers.

Under Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (Day-NRLM) of Ministry of Rural Development, around 58,295 Krishi Sakhi for Agriculture activities were given training by 735 State Level Resource Persons.