International Women’s Day: Krishi Jagran Interacted with 10 Most Inspiring Women Farmers of India

International Women’s Day: Women play a multidimensional role at every stage in agriculture — from sowing to planting, drainage, irrigation, fertilizer, plant protection, harvesting, weeding, and storage. They are a critical resource in agriculture and the rural economy. Their part may be silent in this male-dominated occupation but without them, the whole Agriculture system would collapse.

Krishi Jagran recognizes their contribution and so we are celebrating International Women’s Day 2022 i.e. 8^th March 2022 with a series of live sessions that include Women Farmers, Women entrepreneurs, and Gentlemen from the industry who are proud feminists.

In this series, at 11 am Krishi Jagran organized a live session where we welcomed 10 women farmers from different regions in India who shared their experiences and opinions on the topic, “Role of Women in Agriculture”. Shruti Joshi Nigam, Content Manager, Krishi Jagran was the moderator of this entire session.  

You can find this live interaction on Krishi Jagran's Official FB Page

To start this Interaction, Yogita Khandebharad, a progressive farmer from Maharashtra who also runs Om Krishi Prakriya Udyog told us that she is connected with over 700 women farmers through their Producer Company. She started in 2009 on a very small scale with only Rs 2000. Slowly and gradually she learned about the branding and marketing of the products. This helped her to scale the business!

Suman Sharma who resides in village Balita, Kota Rajasthan was another esteemed speaker. She is a graduate and belongs to a lower-middle-class farm family. She always wanted to find a better way to earn income to become self-dependent and her dreams came true with the establishment of a small Soya Processing Unit in the year 2014. At the time of starting of the venture of Soybean processing. Suman Sharma started with Rs 2 lakhs, as capital investment. She used the roof-top area of her house converting it into a hall of 20’x 15’ and installed the processing machinery and working space.

Next Up Baskanya Jirati, a Progressive farmer from Madhya Pradesh joined us and highlighted how multifaceted a role do women play in their life. Not only do they take care of their family, but they also contribute significantly to their family fields. She further highlighted that women are recognized in many fields like science and sports but in agriculture, their contribution goes unnoticed. Therefore, more efforts must be taken up to motivate them in this particular area.

Swapna James, a progressive Farmer from kerala joined next. She is an indomitable hardworking woman living in Palakkad, Kerala. She has a 19-acre family field with half of the area cultivated with Rubber and the rest of the area is reserved for coconut, areca nut, cocoa, nutmeg, coffee, jackfruit etc.

Nabanita Das, The Next speaker is a daughter of Late Ananda Das of Jorhat district in Assam is a young, energetic and dynamic progressive woman farmer. After passing her High School Learning Certificate Examination, she got trained as an Auxiliary Nurse. However, being the daughter of a farmer; she always wanted to be a ‘farmer’ in her heart all along.

After a few years she chose farming as her occupation leaving the nursing profession from a government hospital in Jorhat and started doing organic farming from the year 2010. Now she is an established progressive farmer & Proud owner of “Nabanita Organic Farm”.