Priority Changes for Strengthening Women's Role as Producers, Processors and Providers of Food and Nutrition

Abstract

The mutual dependence between access to food, nutrition and women's agency brings women to the centre stage of the discourse on food justice. The contemporary discourse needs to engage with wide?ranging issues pertaining to the agrarian crisis, feminisation, and new institutional arrangements facing the sector. Prima facie , this would imply changing the priorities right from research and extension, through resource allocation and crop choice, to subsidies and incentives at local and national levels. As an important prerequisite, the growth approach for agriculture is to be geared towards valuing women's work in a holistic framework. This, essentially, would call for the mobilisation, consolidation and strengthening of the right forces working within communities and groups of people committed to working towards the common goal of a gendered growth in agriculture and food security in India. Civil society organisations may take a lead in anchoring the process.