"The Soul is Satisfied" - Woman Farmer on Sharing Abundance
Sharing Abundance
Like all too many in the agrarian belt, Meena Gore from Parbhani district, Maharashtra, went through tragedy in life, losing her husband to suicide due to medical debt. Rejecting the pity that people typically show widows like herself, she got involved in the Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (Women Farmers’ Rights Forum) and signed up for leadership training conducted by SOPPECOM with AID support, to ensure that she and other women in suicide-impacted families could access the rights and entitlements that were theirs by law.
Once she secured land, she took up agro-ecology, growing 35 crops on one acre. These include vegetables pulses and grains, which she uses at home and also sells in the market. Her neighbors who used to avoid her now eagerly visit her and “cannot resist” plucking some vegetables for themselves, which she shares with pride and satisfaction.
AID support helped expand this program to Beed and Hingoli districts, working in particular with sugar cane cutters. After starting agro ecological farming, several women have reduced or even stopped migrating, investing their labour instead on their own land.
Seeing the success, more farmers are seeking to make the switch. In November, women in five villages of Nandurbar district started training in the techniques and planted their winter gardens. SOPPECOM resource persons meet with them in person and on calls to address challenges they face along the way.
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Pictured, from top: Chanda Ghodam, Yavatmal, Padma Bhusari, Nagpur, Sanjeevani Salve, Beed, Sangeeta Tayade, Akola, Sattubhai Paikrao, Hingoli, Suman Ovhal, Beed practice agro-ecological farming. Read the stories of these and more women farmers who like Meena have become powerful changemakers in Pushkala: The Plentiful.
