Dear Reader, 
 

Since the launch of the Woman Farmer Project in March this year, I have been on the lookout for news relating to women farmers. While there are several pieces floating around, owing to 2026 being the International Year of the Woman Farmer, one specific report stayed with me. 

Three months ago, Maharashtra passed the Women Farmers Empowerment Act 2026. This means that women farmers in the state will now be given ‘Woman Farmer Certificates’ if they are engaged in agricultural activities, irrespective of land ownership and remuneration. The Act also recognises that women farmers are essential for sustainability of agriculture and protection of food security “in an era of climate change.” As the first Indian state legislation that delinks land from the definition of what a farmer is, it “represents a potentially important shift, from recognising the owner of agricultural land to recognising the person who actually farms,” write authors Sanchit Gupta and Tanu M. Goyal in The Hindu. 

If women are the ones who actually farm, what does their labour entail? 

 

For the 64.4 percent of working women who are employed in agriculture in India, this involves activities such as sowing, planting, weeding, cleaning, ploughing, fishing, harvesting, gathering, processing, seed-saving, drying, cattle-rearing and milking—while still getting classified as ‘unpaid helpers.’ In addition to farm labour, for women farmers, everyday work includes cooking, cleaning, and caregiving for the household. It also includes taking up additional responsibilities when men in the house migrate from villages owing to economic pressures and the climate crisis, while often being categorised as a population with no agency.

 

Since the beginning of the Woman Farmer Project, the team at The Locavore has been grappling with several questions: Who is a woman farmer and how do we account for their many everyday labours? What is considered work? What is visible? What remains unrecognised? Who is paid? Who is denied their due? Who makes the decisions? And who gets impacted? 

 

In an attempt to understand some of these questions, we documented the everyday labour of three women farmers from three distinct regions—Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Meghalaya—as a part of the project’s storytelling fellowship.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Kannai village, writer-researcher fellow Nidhi K. and audio-visual fellow Kiran Admache followed 45-year-old farmer Kalabai Merawi on her way to collect mahua seeds from her family’s fields. Kalabai has been collecting seeds for the past 25 years. She belongs to the Gond Merawi community, who have been historically dependent on mahua seeds as a major source of livelihood. “[Collecting seeds] is a back-breaking job, but I am used to it. We come back, rest for a bit, and then I start preparing food,” she says. During the mahua-picking season, Kalabai is stretched between seed collection, domestic chores, and agricultural work for their paddy crop. Read more about Kalabai and the labour that sustains her family in this story.

In Tamil Nadu, S. Pandiammal, 44, a former fish worker and currently a part of the Ramanathapuram Fishers Union, starts her day at 5 am. The Woman Farmer Project fellows from Tamil Nadu—writer-researcher Rashmi Sridar and audio-visual fellow Revathi Sunil—interviewed Pandiammal as she advocates for the rights of Chinnapalam’s fishers’. Pandiammal recognises the additional burden of domestic work on women fishers, while also earning an income for their household. “In June, we met the fisheries minister to close the [alcohol] shop [owned by the state government]. Men waste their earnings on liquor, and women have to earn and take care of children,” she says. Read more about Pandiammal’s work towards mobilising for fishers’ rights in this story.

In Meghalaya, Ibadapmon Barim, 32, runs her food processing business, and on busy days cooks from 9 am to midnight. Writer-researcher fellow Queeneerich Kharmawlong and audio-visual fellow Ibapdianghun Myria documented Ibadapmon’s work—making pickles, jams, juices, and wine in her verandah in Khweng village. “The heat is just too much! But pineapple and roselle juice sell well,” she says, while performing this labour and caring for her two sons. The other household chores are done after the work is completed at midnight. Read more about Ibadapmon's food processing unit, which has made her financially independent, in this story.

The Woman Farmers Empowerment Act 2026, defines a ‘farmer’ as any woman who is  engaged in agriculture and contributing to innovation, conservation, preservation, or propagation of diverse agricultural practices, working with any type of farm animals and fish, and using cultivation methods for climate resilience. The Act also acknowledges that women farmers engage in all these activities and more but their labour continues to be systematically unrecognised. This, in turn, leads to exclusions and limits women farmers’ access to government schemes and policies. 

 

Given this, it feels essential for us to document the complexities of women farmers' lives and labour with rigour. Each story and film from the Woman Farmer Project covers segments of women farmers’ experiences that often get overlooked. For me, it is a repository that documents how women spend their time—shuttling across fields, forests, seas, and homes. 

October Reads

—Ibadapmon Barim, 32, Khweng village, Meghalaya 

“Our elders say, if you never put an axe to a mahua tree, it won’t let a person go hungry”

—Kalabai Merawi, 45, Kannai village, Madhya Pradesh

“We have always lived on these islands and gone to sea. How can the state say it does not belong to us?”

—S. Pandiammal, 44, Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu

Woman Farmer Project is a multimedia storytelling initiative led by The Locavore in partnership with the Doc Society Climate Story Kitchen. It aims to build a roadmap for successful collaborations between institutions and innovative grassroots networks who are committed to amplifying climate stories.

The Doc Society supports climate action across the globe by championing independent filmmakers, audio producers, journalists, and artists working alongside impact producers and movement builders to bring more communities into climate conversations to advance climate just and biodiverse futures.