The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations marked International Women’s Day in 2023 by emphasizing the importance of giving women in agriculture access to digital technologies.

In September 2023, the New Delhi G20 Leaders’ Declaration committed to invest in inclusive, sustainable and resilient agriculture, and to promote innovation for agricultural value chains and systems by and for women farmers.

Both events signal the growing realisation that the Sustainable Development Goals of Ending Poverty (SDG1) and Zero Hunger (SDG2) are going to require empowered women agriculturists.

How Important are Women Farmers to Rural Development?

In developing countries, women make up on average 43 percent of agricultural labour, and almost 50 percent in Eastern and South-eastern Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

In India, women are a significant part of the agriculture sector but tend not to own the land they cultivate. In 2021-22, 62.9 percent of women workers (and 75.9 percent of rural women workers) were engaged in agriculture but only 14% had land holdings.

Growth in the agriculture sector is two to four times more effective in raising incomes among the poorest compared to other sectors, and growth in small-scale agriculture is more effective at reducing hunger and poverty than any other sector.

Although we know that empowering farmers, and particularly women farmers, is an important way to address poverty, recent Indian agricultural growth has been weak. According to the Economic Survey Report 2022-23, it fell to 3 per cent in 2021-22 and was 3.3 per cent in 2020-21. In comparison, industrial production grew 10.3% in 2020-21 and by 4.1 percent in 2021-22. India’s agricultural sector is growing slower relative to other sectors.

Increasing agricultural productivity is crucial to sustainable development but the reality is that, lacking land ownership, and with lower rates of literacy and limited access to digital tools, women need very different support and training to men.

How Does Digital Technology Help Women Farmers Increase Agricultural Productivity?

There is a particularly acute digital gender gap in India, particularly in rural areas. Even simple additions of technological solutions, such as access to information in one’s native language, can show remarkable effects.

Individuals using the Internet, by gender

(Selected Asian economics)

Data source: International Telecommunication Union, 2021

Graphic source: Observer Research Foundation

In Gujarat, the women-led Bhungroo water management system has helped more than 18,000 marginal farmers. Drought and water-logging dominates the lives of the underprivileged women farmers of the region. Bhungroo is a technology that stores excess rainfall underground and can retrieve it when water is scarce. It’s estimated that longer growing seasons have increased the typical family’s annual income from US$210 to US$700.

Solidaridad Regional Expertise Centre engages with women dairy farmers to increase their digital access and digital literacy. Women play a significant role in dairy farming and do a large amount of the labour involved, however, due to lack of resources or digital literacy, they are often excluded from formal supply chains. Solidaridad disseminated best practices, collaborated with experts to facilitate knowledge-building for these women, and also trained them on financial literacy.

Solidaridad Facilitating Women Dairy Farmers in Uttar Pradesh

An important part of the problem is to understand that there are gendered differences in agriculture at the grassroots. Digital Farm School (DFS) is a Reliance Foundation programme which has been working to empower farmers, and address women farmers’ issues.

What is a Digital Farm School?

Digital Farm Schools are education platforms that build on the concept of the Farm Field School (which has been implemented by the FAO in several countries). Digital Farm Schools also incorporate ‘phygital’ (physical plus digital) modes and connect groups of farmers. Students gain livelihood, resilience, and improvement information from each other as well as from experts. Crucially, communication is with those who work on the farmland, and not just the owner.

Reliance Foundation’s five-year DFS initiative began in 2022-23. It is present across 15 states in India, with mostly small and marginal farmers who farm nine crops that are of importance to improve the country’s food security and national income.

The DFS communicates with farmers throughout the crop cycle, collating their queries and needs, and uses this feedback to increase their access to information through multiple communication platforms, such as voice message services, text messaging, WhatsApp groups, and physical interactions.

The use of digital modes reduces the time required to engage with the platform, as well as the cost involved, as a large part of it happens over phones, which most of the beneficiaries already have access to.

Digital Farm Schools and the Needs of Women Farmers

Throughout the geographical locations it works in, the DFS also engages with women agriculturists. The ease of access and flexibility works for women farmers. For instance, there are image and video advisories for those who have limited literacy.

One success story comes from the Balaghat district, Madhya Pradesh. The women of the Baiga tribe are largely dependent on agricultural income and daily wage labour and have less access to information than their male counterparts. In order to engage with them, the DFS programme first made contact through the Self Help Group (SHG) in Boda village. The SHG communicated specific pain points they faced, such as increasing pestilence and crop disease.

Women in the DFS Programme from Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh

151 women from 13 villages were engaged. These women received Reliance Foundation Information Services advisories and came together through a WhatsApp group. They also interacted with experts through multi-location Audio Conferences, which they could attend from their own homes.

Women Farmers and Their Micro-Enterprises

In the areas where DFS has been established, 62 percent of the households of farmers engaged in the programme own livestock and other micro-enterprises for additional income. While farming is considered the most important part of their livelihood, micro-enterprises are a significant part of their livelihood.

Management of these micro-enterprises is mainly in the hands of women. The DFS initiative engages with women specifically in these areas, providing information on kitchen gardens, livestock management, and so on.