Towards Recognising Women Farmers, Pg10

Key Highlights:

• Maharashtra passed the Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill in July 2026, granting women independent recognition as farmers irrespective of land ownership.
• This legislation is the first Indian State law to operationalize an activity-based, land-delinked definition of 'farmer', as outlined in the National Policy for Farmers (2007).
• The year 2026 has been designated as the International Year of the Woman Farmer by the United Nations.
• The bill aims to address the invisibility of women in agriculture, who constitute a significant portion of the workforce but often lack formal recognition.

Detailed Insights:

• The Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill broadens the definition of 'agriculture' and 'farmer' to include women engaged in farming for at least one season annually.
• It explicitly recognizes categories such as landless cultivators, landless livestock rearers, agricultural laborers, plantation laborers, and pastoralists.
• In 2025, agriculture employed approximately 110 million women and 127 million men, indicating near gender parity in the workforce.
• Over 41% of female agricultural workers were unpaid in 2025, compared to 20% of men, highlighting a significant disparity.
• Only 14% of operational agricultural land holdings are with women, primarily due to patriarchal norms linking land records to men's names.
• This lack of land ownership-based recognition prevents women from accessing crucial Central and State agricultural schemes and incentives.
• For example, only 23% of beneficiaries under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme are women.
• States like Meghalaya (70%) and Kerala (44%) show higher women beneficiaries due to alternative recognition mechanisms such as Kudumbashree collectives.
• Effective implementation of the new bill will require robust information campaigns and either self-registration or identification of women farmers by Gram Sabhas.
• Connecting the new database of women farmers with the Agri Stack and issuing FarmerIDs is essential for their integration into the broader digital agricultural ecosystem.

Key Concepts Involved:

• National Policy for Farmers (2007): A policy that proposed an activity-based, land-delinked definition of 'farmer' to recognize actual cultivators.
• Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN): A Central Sector scheme providing direct income support of ₹6,000 annually to eligible landholding farmer families.
• Agri Stack: A proposed digital platform by the Union Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare to create a unified agricultural ecosystem.
• Gram Sabha: The primary body of the Panchayati Raj system, comprising all adult members registered in the electoral rolls of a village.