To mark International Women’s Day 2023, Nele Verhulst, cropping systems agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), shares progress from the Women in Crop Science group and how their work tries to contribute to gender equality in agriculture and science.
Growing up in the nineties in Belgium, I was interested in feminism, but I also assumed that the fight for equal rights for women and men had been fought and won. Studying bioscience engineering in the 2000s, more than half of the students were women, so this demonstrated to me that we were all set (although the large majority of professors were men, it seemed to be just a matter of time for that to be resolved). I have now been working in Latin America as an agronomist and researcher for more than 15 years and have come to realize that there is still a lot of work to do to achieve equal opportunities for female farmers, farm advisors, scientists, and other professionals in agriculture.
At CIMMYT, between 20 and 25 percent of staff in the science career track – careers involving field, lab, data, and socioeconomic work – are female. Because of that, Alison Bentley and I started a group of women in crop science at CIMMYT about one year ago on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science in 2022. In our first meeting, we aimed to connect, discussed how to build a network (we did not even have a list of all women in science at CIMMYT, so it was hard to know who to invite), and decided whether we wanted to commit to additional actions to achieve a more inclusive environment at CIMMYT.
Since that first meeting, we have organized coffee mornings and other events, and have split into smaller working groups to draft action plans on ten topics: gender in the workplace strategy development, advancement for locally recruited staff, mentorship, recruitment processes, microaggressions, harassment policies, work-life balance, family friendly work environment, raising external awareness about women in agriculture, and ensuring internal visibility.
I have enjoyed being able to make some first small changes – who knew sanitary facilities would turn out to be a recurring topic! – but most of all I have loved the opportunities over the past year to connect with women with a shared passion for crop science in all its aspects. That passion and the opportunities it creates to improve the lives of farmers and rural communities is the most important thing we are celebrating today.
Cover photo: Women participate in a public harvest event for timely sown wheat organized by the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project with Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) in in Nagwa village near Patna in Bihar, India. (Photo: Madhulika Singh/CIMMYT)
More than 40% of the global agricultural labor force is made up of women, and in the least developed countries, two in three women are employed in farming. Yet, despite being the largest contributors to this sector, women’s potential as farmers, producers and entrepreneurs is frequently untapped due to gender inequalities, limited access to farming assets and inputs, low participation in decision-making spaces, and lack of financing and capacity-building opportunities.
Tackling these gendered barriers is critical not only to help women achieve their highest economic potential, but also to feed an increasingly hungry world. Before this year’s Women’s History Month comes to an end, read the stories of three Bangladeshi women—Begum, Akter and Rani—to find out how the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are empowering them to become decision-makers in their communities, learn new skills and knowledge to boost their incomes, and advocate for bending gender norms across the country.
Embracing agricultural mechanization has improved Begum’s family finances
Rina Begum lives in Faridpur, a major commercial hub in southern Bangladesh. Before starting a business, her financial situation was precarious. Her primary source of income was her husband’s work as a day laborer, which brought in very little money. This, coupled with the lack of job security, made it hard to support a family.
Rina Begum started out in business as a service provider, hiring agricultural machines to farmers.
About five years ago, Begum’s interest in agricultural mechanization was ignited by the farmers in her town, who were earning extra money by investing in farm machinery and hiring it out. Her first foray into the business world was buying a shallow irrigation pump and setting herself up as a service provider. Next, she saw her neighbor using a power tiller operated seeder and decided to try one out for herself. Finally, after taking part in a potential machinery buyer program run by CIMMYT under the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MEA) and funded by USAID, she took the bold step of purchasing a seeder and adding it to her inventory of machines available for hire.
While her husband learned to operate the seeder, Begum put her business and accounting skills to good use, taking on an essential role in what ended up being the family business and establishing herself as an entrepreneur. Her work defied the established social norms, as she regularly interacted with the mechanics and farmers who came to her for mechanized services. Moreover, she occasionally stepped up alongside her husband to repair and maintain the machines. All this earned Begum a reputation as an experienced service provider, operator and mechanic, and turned her into a decision-maker and a role model to her family and community.
In 2021, Begum used her business profits to pick up the bill for her daughter’s marriage. “I know this job inside-out now,” she says, “and I’m really proud to have paid for the wedding myself.”
This taste of success fueled Begum’s appetite to expand the business even further, pushing her to take part in another training offered by CIMMYT, this time in mat-seedling production. Moreover, Begum, who plans to grow seedlings to sell on to rice farmers this year, has applied for a government subsidy to buy a rice transplanter, which can be hired out for use with mat-seedlings, and increase her stock of agricultural machinery.
With her new skills, Akter is advancing gender equality in Bangladesh’s light engineering sector
At age 18, Nilufar Akter (pictured top) passed her high school certificate and soon after married Rezaul Karim, the owner of a light engineering workshop in Bogura, a city in northern Bangladesh, that manufactures agricultural machinery parts, with a workforce mainly composed of men. Akter’s ambition was to go out into the workplace and make her own money, so when Karim asked her to work alongside him, she agreed and soon became a valuable part of the business. Her primary responsibilities were inventory management and marketing, as well as business management, which she found more difficult.
Reza Engineering Workshop began working with CIMMYT in 2020 as part of CSISA-MEA, an initiative that supports light engineering workshops in Bangladesh with staff development, access to finance, management, and business growth. Under this project, CIMMYT organized a management training at the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI), which Akter attended. With the confidence these new skills gave her, she went back to the workshop and introduced a few changes, including building a computerized finance management system and updating the stack management. Moreover, she also established a dedicated restroom for female employees.
“We need human resources to maintain things in the business—and women can do a fantastic job”, Akter says. “We had no idea what good source of strength women workers would be for the factory. Therefore, if we provided them with adequate facilities, we could create jobs for many women who really need them”, she adds.
Akter’s current priorities are workshop safety and occupational health, two issues she’s tackling using the knowledge she learned in the CIMMYT training. Recently, she’s created some occupational health and safety posters, and established a series of workshop rules. “I used to think I wasn’t cut out for light engineering because it was primarily male-dominated, but I was mistaken”, Akter confesses. “This industry has a lot to offer to women, and I’m excited at the prospect of hiring more of them”, she adds.
Producing better quality rice has boosted the income of Rani and her family
Monika Rani lives in Khoshalpur, a village located in Dinajpur district in northern Bangladesh, with her husband Liton Chandra Roy and their two-year-old child. They farm just a quarter of a hectare of land, and Liton supplements their income with occasional wages earned as a day laborer.
Monika Rani wanted to increase her family’s income to provide better schooling opportunities for her children.
Rani was looking for ways to increase their income so they could give their children an education and a better life. During last year’s boro rice-growing season (December to May), she and her husband joined the premium grade rice production team of CIMMYT as part of CSISA-MEA. The market value and yield of premium quality rice is greater than other types, so when Rani heard that she could make more money producing that variety, she decided to make a start right away. CIMMYT provided her with five kgs of premium seed for the 2021-22 winter season and trained her in premium quality rice production technology and marketing, which she followed to the letter.
Through hard work and persistence, Rani and her husband avoided the need to hire any additional labor and were rewarded with the maximum yield possible. She dried the premium quality rice grain according to buyer demand and sold 1,600 kgs, in addition to 140 kgs to farmers in her town.
“Knowing about premium quality rice production has tremendously changed my future for the better,” Rani explains. “I had no idea that, through my own hard effort, I could have a better life”, she added.
Cover photo: Nilufar Akter is using the knowledge she gained in CIMMYT training to focus on workshop safety and occupational health in her business.
Women’s involvement in maize production is often shrouded in assumptions. One might assume that women have minimal say in management decisions, especially regarding jointly managed plots, due to rigid gender norms that prioritize men’s decisions on farming-related matters. However, operating under such assumptions about women’s role in the management of maize farms risks confining women to specific roles and not meeting their needs in the maize seed system.
To break these assumptions, Rachel Voss, Gender Specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and a team of fellow researchers are conducting a study, “Unpacking maize plot management roles of women and men in smallholder households in Kenya.” The study, part of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGG) project, aims to asses the gender dynamics of maize management in Kenya in order to categorize plots and households, analyzing intrahousehold decision-making and evaluating which women have the power and agency to apply their preferences for seed on their farms — and which ones do not.
Challenging perceptions
Take, for example, Sofa Eshiali, a 60-year-old farmer from Ikolomani, western Kenya, who participated in the study. She defies the stereotype of women having a limited role in maize farming, as she is deeply involved in decision-making on maize production in her household and represents an important client for new breeding efforts and more inclusive seed distribution programs. Together with her husband, she has grown maize primarily for family consumption since getting married, getting involved in all matters concerning their half acre farm. “For us, when we want to plant [our maize seeds], we sit together and discuss the cash we have at hand and decide if we can get two hands to help us work our half acre of land,” she says.
Eshiali and her husband make a joint decision on the maize seed variety they plant every season based on performance of the previous planting season. “We previously used the H614D [maize seed variety] and it did well in our farm — except when it gets very windy, as our crops fall and our bean crop gets destroyed before it is ready for harvest. Last season, we decided to use the H624 because it remains there even when it is windy,” she said, demonstrating her knowledge of maize seed variety.
In addition to seed choice and farm labour, Eshiali and her husband also discuss what fertilizer to use and when they need to shift to a new choice, and they make decisions together concerning their farm and farm produce. This includes deciding what amount of harvest they can sell and what to do with the sale proceeds. For a household like Eshiali’s, new maize varieties need to appeal to — and be marketed to — both spouses.
Sofa Eshiali, a 60-year-old maize farmer from Ikolomani, Western Kenya, who participated in the study. (Photo: Susan Umazi Otieno/CIMMYT)
Farming roles
Eshiali’s reality of equitable engagement in the farm may not be the case for other households in her community and across Kenya, meaning that reaching women with new varieties is not always simple.
As Voss points out, women are often less involved in major household decisions than men, frequently due to longstanding social norms. However, there is little understanding of how decisions are negotiated at the household level, particularly when crops are jointly produced. Furthermore, in many places, men are perceived to be the “real” farmers, while women are viewed to only play a supportive role within household farming. This can lead to the exclusion of women from extension activities, trainings and input marketing efforts.
Against this background, Voss notes that the ongoing study aims to identify in which types of households women have control over seed choice and in which households other constraints might be more important.
“To get new maize varieties into men’s and women’s fields, we need to identify the bottlenecks to reaching women. This means understanding, among other things, how decisions about seed are made within households and how households source their seed,” she explains.
Vignettes showing five different decision-making scenarios based on fictitious husband and wife characters. (Photo: Susan Umazi Otieno/CIMMYT)
Best-case scenario
To overcome the challenge of discussing the sensitive topic of decision-making roles between spouses and to encourage more culturally unbiased, candid responses, the study uses vignettes, or short stories, to describe various scenarios. This enables farmers to relate with different farm management decision making scenarios without pointing fingers at their spouses.
The study’s coauthor and research team leader, Zachary Gitonga, explains that the use of vignettes is still a relatively new method, especially in agricultural research, but enables digging deeper into sensitive topics.
Data collection involved a joint survey with both men and women household heads about maize plot management before breaking into separate discussions using the vignettes. These presented five possible decision-making scenarios with fictitious husband and wife characters. The five scenarios were then used to discuss strategic seed choices, operational decisions related to issues such as planting date and hiring farm labor, and financial decisions such as the use of the income from the maize sales.
“By presenting a set of short stories, a farmer can determine what scenario they relate with. In the study, farmers can talk about sensitive interaction without having to assign responsibility to their spouse, especially negatively, in the way decisions are made,” Gitonga said.
The vignettes also made it easier for both the enumerators to explain the scenarios and the farmers to understand and freely give their feedback. Sometimes, he pointed out, what men and women perceive as joint decision-making might not be the same. For instance, some men may think informing their wives that they are going to buy a particular seed means involving them. Here, the vignette activity aims to unpack the reality of joint decision-making in households.
From East Africa to Asia
During a recent field visit to the study area in Kakamega, Kenya, Hom Gartaula, Gender and Social Inclusion Research Lead at CIMMYT, noted the study’s importance to the inclusion of women in the farming cycle. “We urgently need to better understand the reality of women’s and men’s situation in terms of access to maize seed and other needed inputs and services. Otherwise, we risk designing breeding and seed systems that do not address the needs of the most vulnerable farmers, including women,” he said, adding that data from the study will enable insights into and comparison with the gender dynamics of wheat production in South Asia through cross-regional learning.
Gartaula also noted that, even though men predominantly manage South Asia’s wheat agriculture, women significantly contribute to it, especially in smallholder farming systems. In recent years, women’s contribution to providing labor and decision-making in wheat agriculture has increased due to the feminization of agriculture and livelihood diversification among smallholders.
Since women’s contributions to wheat farming are often vital to pre- and post-harvest processes, Gartaula notes they ought to be part of the entire maize and wheat value chain. That includes building more equitable seed delivery systems. “It is therefore important to have seed products that address the needs of different users and include home consumption and commercial sales,” he says.
The study will inform future efforts to ensure equitable seed access for both men and women farmers. Ultimately, if both men and women farmers access the best seed based on their needs and priorities, incomes will rise, households will be better sustained, and communities will become more food secure.
In the traditional Indian society Madhulika Singh grew up in, girls choosing to study science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) was as radical as choosing a life partner on their own.
“They say women hold up half the sky. I believe they should hold up as much and contribute equally in STEM too,” says Singh, now an agriculture specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
In her early teens she saw her mother, a school headmaster, comfortably navigate her career along with her domestic responsibilities without a sweat. She later saw a similar example in her sister-in-law. “I grew up thinking ‘there is so much that a woman is capable of,’ whether at home or her workplace,” Singh recalls.
This strong idea of women’s potential led her to pursue studies in science. “Many women before me, like my mother’s generation, were encouraged to take up [careers in] humanities — become a teacher, or pursue home management courses — to ensure a smooth transition once married,” Singh explains. She hoped this would change during her time and that following a career in STEM would be a matter of choice — not gender.
Singh’s goals and ambitions were very clear from the very beginning. In school, she was interested in biology, particularly plant studies and botany. Her inquisitive nature was reflected in her projects and presentations, scoring her high grades. She demonstrated a thorough understanding of plant physiology and her passion for the subject. The budding scientist always wanted to know more and to do more, which Singh feels resonates with her current research and publications.
A popular quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi says “Be the change you want to see in the world.” When Singh chose to take up plant science in graduate school and then agriculture science for her doctorate, she became the change she had hoped to see in her home and society as a young girl. With the support from her family but a skeptical society, she went ahead and pursued a career in STEM, beginning her research on maize genotypes and conservation agriculture. In 2013 she joined CIMMYT as a physiologist.
CIMMYT researcher Madhulika Singh takes notes while talking to farmers about their rice-wheat cropping practice in Nalanda, Bihar state, India. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Helping farmers transition to conservation agriculture
Singh currently works in her home state of Bihar for the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), led by CIMMYT. She is engaged with over ten thousand farmers from the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, supporting the adoption of conservation agriculture practices.
Farming is vital for the region, as nearly 70% of the population is engaged in agriculture and extension services. However, food and livelihoods are threatened by the small size of farms, low incomes, and comparatively low levels of agricultural mechanization, irrigation and productivity.
Singh and her colleagues have led the transition from traditional farming to sustainable intensification practices — like early wheat sowing, zero tillage and direct-seeded rice — which have helped smallholder farmers increase their yield potential substantially.
“We believe a project like CSISA, along with the government and partners, can help advance and support in realizing the full agriculture potential of these regions,” Singh explains.
Roots in the soil
Her grandparents were farmers. “To be able to care for the land that provided you nourishment and a living was always admired upon,” she says. As a crop scientist, Singh’s family acknowledges her work as an extension of the services her grandparents practiced.
Sustained by this motivation and encouragement, Singh feels reassured of her role: joining other scientists, partners and farmers to make agriculture sustainable and our communities food-secure.
“The fact that the data we generate from our experiments serve as building blocks in the generation of knowledge and help farmers optimize the cost of inputs and increase their productivity is fulfilling and enriching to me,” Singh expresses.
Apart from working to build the capacity of farmers and extension workers, Singh supports the implementation of field trials and community-based technology demonstrations. She also helps refine key agricultural innovations, through participatory testing, and optimizes cropping systems in the region.
Leading the way for for the next generation
A true representative of the STEM community, Singh is always learning and using her experience to give back to society. She has co-authored numerous books and contributed to journals, sharing her knowledge with others.
Other women leaders in STEM have inspired Singh in her professional life, including CIMMYT’s former deputy director general for research Marianne Banziger. Singh believes Banziger was trailblazing and that young girls today have many female role models in STEM that can serve as inspiration.
The change is already here and many more young women work in STEM, pursuing excellence in agriculture sciences, engineering and research studies contributing to as well as claiming “half the sky.”
Cover photo: CIMMYT researcher Madhulika Singh (center-right) stands with farmers from self-help groups in the village of Nawtanwa, West Champaran, in India’s Bihar state. CIMMYT works on gender inclusion and participation through partnerships with other organizations and self-help groups. (Photo: CIMMYT)
This international Women’s Day, March 8, 2022, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) celebrates the essential role that women play in agriculture and food systems, and acknowledges that gender equality is essential to achieve a sustainable future. The burden of climate change impacts women disproportionately, even though we rely on them to drive change in climate adaptation, mitigation and solutions.
For example, in the last year, CIMMYT research found that educating women farming wheat in Bihar, India, increases the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices, which, in turn, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and boosts nitrogen productivity, eco-efficiency and yield. Additionally, in Mexico, a CIMMYT study found that women are less likely to default on agricultural credit than men, but seldom receive loans. Connecting women to financial capital to obtain agricultural inputs is an essential step in boosting their decision-making in food production.
Read more about our pathbreaking work in gender research in the collection of stories below!
Gender equality for climate-resilient, sustainable food systems
A farmer weeds a maize field in Pusa, Bihar state, India. (Photo: M. DeFreese/CIMMYT)
Gender-responsive and gender-intentional maize breeding
A new paper by CIMMYT researchers takes stock of lessons learnt on gender inclusivity and maize breeding in Africa. Scientists also assess knowledge gaps that need to be filled to effectively support gender-responsive and gender-intentional breeding and seed systems work.
Alice Nasiyimu stands in front of a drought-tolerant maize plot at her family farm in Bungoma County, in western Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)
Towards gender-transformative research in the CGIAR
Gender scientists from ten CGIAR centers and key partner institutions came together in a hybrid workshop to integrate gender-transformative research and methodologies into the new CGIAR Initiatives. In this series of videos, GENNOVATE partners share their insights on this topic.
Protected from the harsh midday sun with a hat, Pramila Mondal pushes behind the roaring engine of a two-wheel tractor. She cultivates a small plot of land with her husband in the small village of Bara Kanaibila, in the Rajbari district of Bangladesh, near the capital Dhaka.
Using this machine, she also provides planting services to farmers who need to sow wheat, maize, mungbean, mustard and jute, earning her between $600 and $960 in each planting season.
Mondal and her husband first heard about this technology five years ago, when they attended an event to promote agricultural mechanization, organized by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). After seeing a demonstration, they were convinced that the power-tiller-operated seeder could form the basis for a business.
Ultimately, Mondal bought the machine. She got training on how to operate and maintain it, as part of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization Irrigation and Mechanization Extension Activity (CSISA-MI and CSISA-MEA) project, supported by USAID through Feed the Future.
Let’s get it started
Pramila Mondal activates the self-starting mechanism on her power-tiller-operated seeder. (Photo: Shahabuddin Shihab/CIMMYT)
Mondal became the only woman in her area who could operate a seeder of this type, making her locally famous. After seeing the results of her business, others followed suit.
Eight more women in her area expressed interest in operating power-tiller-operated seeders and also went on to become service providers.
They all faced a similar problem: power tillers are hard to start. Pulling the starting rope or turning the hand crank requires a lot of strength.
The CSISA-MEA project team worked with a local engineering company to introduce a self-starting mechanism for power tiller engines. Since then, starting diesel engines is no longer a problem for women like Mondal.
Glee for the tillerwoman
Almost all of the 11 million hectares of rice planted every year in Bangladesh are transplanted by hand. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find people willing to do this type of backbreaking work. New machines are being introduced that transplant rice mechanically, but they require rice seedling to be raised in seedling mats.
As this new service is required, Mondal jumped at the opportunity. With support from CIMMYT through the CSISA-MEA project, she is now raising seedlings for this new type of rice transplanters.
CIMMYT facilitated training for machinery service providers on mat type seedling production, in partnership with private companies. Mondal and other women who were also trained produced enough seedlings to plant 3.2 hectares of land with a rice transplanter they hired from a local owner.
Mondal and her husband now have big dreams. They intend to buy a rice transplanter and a combine harvester.
“With our effort we can make these changes, but a little support can make big difference, which the CSISA-MEA project did,” she said.
The state of Odisha, in the east of India, ranks sixth in rice production in the country. Agriculture in Odisha’s tribal-dominated plateau region, however, is characterized by depleted soils along with low and variable rice yields. During the monsoon season, more than 60,000 hectares of land are left fallow, due to lack of knowledge and to farmers’ low risk tolerance.
In districts like Mayurbhanj, over 50% of the population belongs to tribal groups. Women there are mostly engaged in traditional roles: being at home looking after family, farm and livestock while their men are away as migrant laborers or with menial jobs. Women working on farming used to be considered daily wage laborers, as if they were only supporting their husband or family who were officially the farmers.
The last few years, with the introduction of maize cultivation and its promotion predominantly for women farmers, a significant change in the perception of women’s role is unfolding in the region.
In 2013, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) began working in the plateau region through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), improving farming systems for higher yields and providing sustainable livelihood options for tribal farmers. Since then, farmers in the region have achieved considerable production of maize in the monsoon season — and women have particularly led this transformation.
Farmers from this region — 28% of which were women — converted 5,400 hectares of fallow lands into successful maize cultivation areas. Not only has this new opportunity helped improve family income, but also women’s identity as resilient and enterprising farmers.
This impact was possible through the applied research efforts of the CSISA project along with partners like Odisha’s State Department of Agriculture, the Odisha Rural Development and Marketing Society (ORMAS), the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) and two federations of women’s self-help groups supported by PRADAN.
On International Women’s Day, we share the story of these successful farmers who have made maize cultivation a part of their livelihoods and a tool for socioeconomic development.
Transforming fallow lands into golden maize fields
Women working in the fields used to be considered daily wage laborers, but today they are acknowledged as enterprising farmers who transformed fallow lands into golden maize fields.
In the season 2019/2020 alone, in all four districts where CSISA is actively engaged — Bolangir, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj and Nuapada — improved maize cultivation was adopted by 7,600 farmers — 28% of which were women — in 5,400 hectares of fallow land, resulting in considerable production of quality maize in the region. Since many of the women in the districts are smallholder farmers or without agriculture land, farming also happens on leased land through self-help groups.
Learning and implementing best maize cultivation practices
CSISA supports the farmers all the way from sowing to crop harvesting, ensuring the produce is shiny and golden. Through self-help groups, farmers have access to fertilizers and machines to weed and earth-up their fields. Researchers have introduced seed cum fertilizer drills for maize sowing, which make fertilizer placement more uniform and crop establishment easier, saving time and helping these women manage both household responsibilities and the farm.
Quality knowledge for quality grain
To strengthen the capacity of farmers, the project team trains them continuously on grain quality parameters like moisture level, foreign matters, infestation rate. Most of the participants are farmers from women collectives and self-help groups. They have gradually advanced in their knowledge journey, going from general awareness to subject-specific training.
Marketing gurus
Even though many large poultry feed mills operate in Odisha, most of their maize comes from outside the state. Women self-help groups are bridging that gap. In collaboration with the State Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, the CSISA project has cultivated a network of market actors including producers, providers of agricultural inputs and development partners. Market access to these value chains will help women, all the way from planting to produce marketing.
Extending the collaboration, in the four districts of Odisha and beyond
A considerable increase in maize production has improved incomes for families across the regions, as well as their food security. It has also created opportunities for women to raise their social and economic standing.
There are opportunities for CSISA and its partners to continue collaborating in the project region and beyond. CIMMYT has worked with Odisha’s State Department of Agriculture, the Odisha Rural Development and Marketing Society (ORMAS), the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), women’s self-help groups, farmers’ producer groups, private seed companies and many other collectives.
Weathering the crisis
Women have shouldered the responsibility and led their families out of the COVID-19 crisis. When men were left jobless and stranded as migrant workers during lockdown, many women associated with the CSISA project began generating income by selling green corn. This small income helped ensure food to feed their families and wellbeing in this critical period.
The road ahead
With the purpose of advocating this positive transformation in similar conditions, CSISA is committed to expand maize intensification in the plateau region of Odisha and engaging more farmers. Ongoing research and studies are focusing on improving the outreach, to help women increase their maize area and productivity with better-bet agronomy. This will contribute to secured income in coming years and the sustainability of the initiative.
