Women in livestock development

(MainsGS3 : Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum support prices; Public Distribution System-objectives, functioning, limitations, revamping; issues of buffer stocks and food security; Technology missions; economics of animal-rearing.) 

Context: 

• The majority of women workers in rural areas (72%) are engaged in agricultural activities but with the exception of participation in dairy co-operatives, specifically in milk marketing, women’s role in the livestock economy is not as widely known or discussed.

Recognise role of women:

• The allied livestock sector of agriculture is one of the most rapidly growing components of the rural economy of India, accounting for 5% of national income and 28% of agricultural GDP in 2018-19.
• In the recent past six years, the livestock sector grew at 7.9% (at constant prices) while crop farming grew by 2%.
• Thus to further enhance its development, India needs to recognise the role of women in livestock rearing, and to include women in all facets of livestock development, be it breeding, veterinary care, extension services, training or access to credit and markets.

Participation in sector:

• There were five million women members in dairy co-operatives in 2015-16, and this increased further to 5.4 million in 2020-21.
• Women accounted for 31% of all members of dairy producer cooperatives in 2020-21. In India, the number of women’s dairy cooperative societies rose from 18,954 in 2012 to 32,092 in 2015-16.
• By recording all activities done in the past 24 hours (be it cooking or working in the fields), 11% of rural women or 48 million women were engaged in animal rearing.
• To illustrate, 12 million rural women were workers in livestock-raising, an estimate based on the Employment and Unemployment Survey of 2011-12.

Hurdles in data collection:

• Conventional labour force surveys fail to accurately record women’s work in livestock-raising for many reasons.
• Among the many problems in data collection, two significant ones are the sporadic nature of work undertaken for short spells throughout the day and often carried out within the homestead, and women’ own responses.
• In short, women actually engaged in the livestock economy were four times the official estimate and a sizable section of the rural population. Statistics from India’s first national Time Use Survey in 2019 corroborate this finding.

Obstacles to deal:

Undercounting: Recent employment surveys such as the Periodic Labour Force Survey fail to collect data on specific activities of persons engaged primarily in domestic duties. So, the undercounting of women in the livestock economy continues.

Information at doorstep: The reach of extension services to women livestock farmers remains scarce.

• • 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 wanted information but wanted it nearer home and at times when they were free.

Institutional credit: Women in poor households, without collateral to offer to banks, found it difficult to avail loans to purchase livestock.

• Around 15 lakh new Kisan Credit Cards (KCC) were provided to livestock farmers under the KCC scheme during 2020-22 but there is no information on how many of them were women farmers.

Skill development:  Women livestock farmers lacked technical knowledge on choice of animals (breeding) and veterinary care.
Decision making: Women were not aware of the composition and functions of dairy boards and that men exercised decisions even in women-only dairy cooperatives.

• Further, the voice of women from landless or poor peasant Scheduled Caste households was rarely heard.