Strengthening the capacity of women farmers for accessing to agri-resources in rice farming

An action research was undertaken in Sankilo village of Cuttack district to empower women farmers and sensitize relevant decision-makers to women’s special needs so that they can gain better access to support services and input markets. Socio-economic and technological empowerment of farmwomen largely depends on ability to arrange farm inputs and make decisions to use the farm inputs in rice farming viz., land, money, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machines etc. Accordingly, suitable technological and institutional interventions were provided and evaluated. Demonstrations on suitable rice production technologies were conducted with women perspective. The study clearly depicted that the participation level of farm women was high in training programmes followed by demonstrations, and meetings with experts. Regarding, accessibility, it was found that 100 % of farmwomen are fully accessed to land, seeds, fertilizer, and water. Similarly, among the women-friendly farm machineries demonstrated, rice husk combustor, finger weeder and 4-row manual drum seeder were perceived as more appropriate by 85.71%, 70.37% and 57.14% farm women respectively.