How Women Farmers can Enhance their Empowerment?

The Central Institute for Women in Agriculture, Bhubaneswar celebrated its Foundation day. The Institute also organized a Technology Demonstration Mela and Scientists’-Farmers’-Interface Session on the occasion. The women-friendly harvesting bags developed under the AICRP on Ergonomics and Safety in Agriculture demonstrated during the occasion, received a favorable response from the various stakeholders. A total of 200 farm women from the Institute adopted villages covering Puri, Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur Districts of Odisha registered their participation in the event. 

The farmers also got their queries well-attended and solved by the Scientific and technical experts from the Institute during the Scientists’-Farmer’-Interface Session held during the occasion. 

Shri Narendra Singh Rathore, DDG (Agricultural Education), marked his presence as the Chief Guest and Prof. Padmaja Mishra, Vice-Chancellor, Rama Devi Women University, Bhubaneswar as the Guest of Honour of the occasion. 

Dr. Rathore highlighted the ICAR-CIWA’s pivotal role in mainstreaming the women farmers to enhance their empowerment. Earlier, Dr. S.K. Srivastava, Director, ICAR-CIWA, in his welcome address, urged to enhance the economic security of farm families with the help of various women-friendly profitable enterprises. 

The Technology Demonstration Mela offered the women farmers a perfect platform for knowing about the plethora of drudgery reducing women-friendly small tools and equipment, viz., groundnut decorticator & stripper, seed treatment drum, seed driller, fertilizer broadcaster, maize de-husker-cum-sheller, seed cleaner-cum-grader, potato slicer, coconut de-husker, etc. 

The progressive women farmers were also felicitated for their outstanding contributions in the field of agriculture, horticulture, dairy farming, poultry, aquaculture, mushroom farming, and bee-keeping, etc., during the occasion.