India has an economy bound to historical agricultural tradition. In the North, the Indus valley and Brahmaputra region are critical agricultural areas with water supplied by the Ganges and monsoon season. Agriculture is a way of life for the majority of India's population; based on 2011 World Bank data, only 17.5% of India's gross domestic product (GDP) is accounted for by agricultural production. Women are an important but often overlooked population in India's agricultural production—they represent the majority of the agricultural labor force. Women's participation in the agrarian labor force plays out in various ways, impacting their economic independence, their decision-making abilities, their agency and access to education and health services. Many women in farming communities suffer poverty and marginalization, and issues of gender inequality.
Indian agriculture
Based on 2012 data, India is home to the fourth-largest agricultural sector in the world. India has an estimated 180 million hectares of farmland with 140 million of which are planted and continuously cultivated. Yet India's agricultural profile is shadowed by the controversial impacts of Green Revolution policies that were adopted in the 1960s and 70s with pressure from the United States Agency for International Development and the World Bank. The Green Revolution brought a modern approach to agriculture by incorporating irrigation systems, genetically modified seed variations, insecticide and pesticide usage, and numerous land reforms. It had an explosive impact, providing unprecedented agricultural productivity in India and turned the country from a food importer to an exporter. Yet the Green Revolution also caused agricultural prices to drop, which damaged India's small farmers. Over the years, Green Revolution technology has caused decreases in agricultural yields. This problem was particularly grave for smallholder farmers, because intensification of synthetic inputs and more advanced agricultural technology is required from year to year in order to maintain the same high levels of production on the same plot of land. Small holder farmers cultivate less than 2 hectares of lands; the majority of all Indian farmers are smallholders and produce the majority of India’s produce. Smallholder farmers face the largest negative impact from green revolution technology–the synthetic inputs have adversely impacted their soil, decreasing yields. Due to the smaller scales of their operations, they are unable to afford more synthetic inputs to compensate for poor soil quality caused by the initial introduction of off-farm inputs. This leads to a “treadmill of technology dependence,” which continues to speed up as soil health declines. In addition to the financial issue, there are also the environmental impacts of the Green revolution which all farmers, big and small, must contend with. Intensification of synthetic fertilizer and pesticide inputs leads to a loss in biodiversity which continues to degrade the environmental quality of cultivated land. Groundwater depletion, soil health decline, a loss of crop genetic diversity all make the created environment continually more inhospitable to introduced crop varieties that have not had the advantage of years of evolution to make them best suited to the changing conditions. India's agricultural sector today still faces issues of efficiency due to lack of mechanization with poorer conditions of farmers, as well as small farm sizes. In India, traditional agriculture is still dominant as many farmers depend on livestock in crop production, for manure as fertilizers, and the use of animal-powered ploughs. According to 2011 statistics, the average farm in India is about 1.5 acres, minuscule when compared the average of 50 hectares in France and or 178 hectares in United States and 273 hectares in Canada. The small farmer tradition of India can be drawn back to the first farm reforms of independent India. Known as the Laws of Divided Inheritance, the reforms were meant to limit the conglomeration of land, by mandating redistribution as land was divided among male inheritors from the prior generation. The perpetuation of these laws not only limits farm size but also bars women from ownership or inheritance. Furthermore, as small farmers face increasing competition with larger farm operations an increasing number of men migrate to city centers for higher wages and employment. Women are in turn left to support the family structure and support small farm lifestyle. In 2011, the agricultural sector workforce in the subcontinent was 75% women.
Feminization of Indian agriculture With the advent of The Green Revolution, and then liberalization, male labor was increasingly drawn towards urban centers, leading to an increased number of women involved in agricultural labor.
A statistical profile In rural India, the percentage of women who depend on agriculture for their livelihood is as high as 84%. Women make up about 33% of cultivators and about 47% percent of agricultural labourers. These statistics do not account for work in livestock, fisheries and various other ancillary forms of food production in the country. In 2009, 94% of the female agricultural labour force in crop cultivation were in cereal production, while 1.4% worked in vegetable production, and 3.72% were engaged in fruits, nuts, beverages, and spice crops. Women's participation rate in the agricultural sectors is about 47% in tea plantations, 46.84% in cotton cultivation, 45.43% growing oil seeds and 39.13% in vegetable production. While these crops require labor-intensive work, the work is considered quite unskilled. Women also heavily participate in ancillary agricultural activities. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, Indian women represented a share of 21% and 24% of all fishers and fish farmers, respectively. Despite their dominance of the labor force women in India still face extreme disadvantage in terms of pay, land rights, and representation in local farmers organizations. Furthermore, their lack of empowerment often results in negative externalities such as lower educational attainment for their children and poor familial health.
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