The Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare organized a webinar on “Women in Agri-startups: Creating Value with Supply Chain Management” in the series of events for celebrating Mahila Kisan Diwas 2021 on Tuesday.
An e-book depicting “Success Stories of 75 progressive women farmers and women entrepreneurs to commemorate 75 years of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ was released on the occasion.
Inaugurating the webinar, Kailash Choudhary stated that women’s contribution to the development of agriculture has increased manifold. Women play a decisive role in ensuring Food Security and Preserving local Agro-Biodiversity.
“The role of women is not only confined to agriculture after India’s independence but their contribution is visible in all sectors including defence, space, administration, sports etc”, he said.
The Webinar focused on Enabling Women Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness; Strategy and Schemes to support Agri-Startups in India; Technology transfer to Startups for Commercialization; Value Chain Management and Challenges faced by Agri-Startups Agripreneures.
Agriculture sector employs 80% of all economically active women; they comprise 33% of the agricultural labour force and 48% of self-employed farmers.
With women predominant at all levels of production the government has tried to push the agenda of ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Agriculture’ by way of earmarking funds for women under various schemes/programmes and development interventions; introducing ‘pro-women initiatives’ to help women derive the benefits of all beneficiary-oriented components of different programmes.
The focus is on the formation of women Self Help Groups (SHGs), Women Federations and Women Farmer Producer Organisations; capacity building interventions; linking them to microcredit; enhancing their access to information and ensuring their representation in decision making bodies at various levels.
The Senior and middle-level extension functionaries, women farmers and agri-entrepreneurs and resource persons from various training institutes participated in the event.
Agriculture sector employs 80% of all economically active women; they comprise 33% of the agricultural labour force and 48% of self-employed farmers. The successful women entrepreneurs from various States also narrated their views and experiences on the occasion.
