Reconstructing Connections Among Women, Agriculture and Food in India

Abstract

The significant participation of women in the food production process can never be denied. Studies say that women play an important role in agricultural process and its related actions like producing crops, horticulture, seeds collection and crop preservations. Women perform around 70 percentage of farming work using their expertise knowledge of biodiversity adding nutrition and value to food than the engineering and non-organic farms. But, from last few decades the participation of women in agriculture is being devalued due to the patriarch developmental projects in agriculture that aims at profit maximisation only. The international agri-business and dominant economics have projected feminine works invisible as female provide food to their household, not to the market. Due to the failure of statistical data, women’s contribution goes unrecorded and unnoticed. This leads not only a violation in women’s economic independence but also it destroys the women’s expertise in the renewability of the nature causing an ecological crisis. The Green revolution, which replaced the traditional method of crop rotation with monoculture, have extracted the energy and nutrition from the food. Hence, in order to retrieve food from this techno-conspiracy, it is very essential to redevelop feminine knowledge of biodiversity in farming. The present paper analyses three things. First, how women, agriculture and food production are interrelated. Secondly, why the devaluation of women’s knowledge and participation from the farm have given birth a hunger game. Finally, how involving women’s knowledge in sustainable agriculture can save the Earth from the hunger crisis.