Do not ignore the role of woman livestock farmer

Source– The post is based on the article “Do not ignore the role of woman livestock farmer” published in The Hindu on 15th October 2022.

Syllabus: GS3- Agriculture

Relevance– Feminisation of agriculture

News- The article explains the challenges faced by women in livestock farming.

Livestock sector accounts for 5% of national income and 28% of agricultural GDP in 2018-19. In the last six years, the livestock sector grew at 7.9% while crop farming grew by 2%.

There were five million women members in dairy co-operatives in 2015-16 and it increased further to 5.4 million in 2020-21. Women accounted for 31% of all members of dairy producer cooperatives in 2020-21. Women’s dairy cooperative societies rose from 18,954 in 2012 to 32,092 in 2015-16.

What are issues related to women livestock farmers?

Issues with data collection– Conventional labour force surveys fail to accurately estimate women work in the livestock sector. Their work is sporadic in nature and they often undertake work for short spells.

Underestimation of women livestock farmers– According to estimates of employment and unemployment survey of 2011-12, 12 million women were engaged in livestock farming. But, women actually engaged in the livestock economy were four times the official estimate.

India’s first national Time Use Survey in 2019 corroborates this finding. By recording all activities done in the past 24 hours, 48 million women in rural areas were engaged in animal rearing. The National Livestock Policy of 2013 rightly states that around 70% of the labour for the livestock sector comes from women.

Other core issues– The reach of extension services to women livestock farmers remains low. According to official reports, 80,000 livestock farmers were trained across the country in 2021. But we have no idea how many were women farmers.

Women farmers found it difficult to avail loans without collateral to purchase livestock. Around 15 lakh new Kisan Credit Cards were provided to livestock farmers under the KCC scheme during 2020-22. There is no information on how many of them were women farmers.

women livestock farmers lacked technical knowledge on choice of animals and veterinary care.

Women were not aware of the composition and functions of dairy boards. Men were decision -makers even in women-only dairy cooperatives.