Recognising women farmers

It indeed augurs well for the future of agriculture in the country that women are taking up farming as their male counterparts are now more keen on joining non-farm vocations for better livelihood. Male farmers are still dominant in cultivating rice as physical labour is a crucial input for such farming. At the same time, Bangladesh faces an acute shortage of non-rice foods. This is reflected from heavy drainage of foreign currencies for its imports. 
And here, women, who so long remained within the four walls of their houses, could successfully be given incentives to grow non-rice foods like pulses, oils, fish and animal products. The demand for these has been growing fast with economic prosperity. On the other hand, the country must reduce the growing import dependence of non-rice foods to insulate the domestic market from the volatility of the world market.
Happily, women are already heavily engaged in homestead-based vegetable and fruit production, and subsistence-based poultry and animal farming. The potential is large in this area. But then women farmers lack easy access to knowledge of improved technology and disease management, supply of quality seeds, and access to finance on easy terms.  It is time for researchers to find ways to fit in pulses and oilseeds in the rice-based system. The vast potential for women in increasing fish production from intensive use of the flood plains must be explored. 
The saddest part of the story is that women preserve seeds, sow them, water the fields and take care of plants. Yet they have no right to proceeds of the crop sales. The crop field is owned by their fathers-in-law and the money to buy the seeds is sent by their husbands who get all the sale proceeds. These are the daily challenges being faced by women farmers of Bangladesh in pursuing their livelihoods.
With no access to agricultural loan or government-issued farmer's card, which helps access agricultural inputs, most women farmers in Bangladesh are forced to depend on their husbands' money for their agricultural ventures.  On the other hand, there is still no agency to give training on crops, cultivation and farming as the most essential requirement for women farmers.
Market access is the other major challenge that women farmers face. Other pressing needs also include recognising women's contribution to agriculture and food security, ensuring subsidy for women farmers and introduction of family agricultural cards and ensuring women's right to property. The private sector should have an enabling environment to link women farmers to markets with expansion of processing and storage facilities and removing constraints in the value chain.
It is true that the country's female labour force participation is fuelled by employment in rural agricultural areas. Even so, Bangladesh has a long way to go. Women make up a little over half the country's total population, but their contribution to measured economic activity, growth and well-being is far below its potential, the World Bank said in its Bangladesh Development Update.
Although Bangladesh's agriculture sector is becoming increasingly dependent on women's participation, women do not get institutional recognition as farmers, let alone own farmlands. Due to patriarchal and discriminatory social structure, women have little or no control over harvest.
It's also true that Bangladesh's success was indeed due to the rise of its women power. Their participation in the farming labour force has been increasing significantly. The central bank is giving special financing support to women entrepreneurs and promoting pro-women human resource policy for the entire financial sector. If their full potential is exploited, women empowerment will take Bangladesh to greater heights of balanced inclusive development.
Women's participation in income-generating activities like dairy farming in rural areas is growing in the country, ensuring countrywide supply of milk, a primary source of nutrition. However, their roles apparently remain behind the scene as men usually deal with clients in most cases.  Though men are doing the financial transactions, female members of those farm families play the key role in dairy farming.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics has brought to the fore the state of women in farming. They own only 18 per cent land in the country while 81 per cent is owned by men. Village women spend 53 per cent time of the day in farming earning 61 per cent of the GDP from agriculture. But then one in three women in Bangladesh suffers from malnutrition.
A landless farmer from Faridpur Hazera Begum recently complained at a workshop, "We work in the fields more than men do, but we do not get any incentive from the government or banks as farmers." Women farmers are deprived of all government initiatives for farmers' welfare.
Indigenous women of the Chittagong Hill Tracts do not have any legal protection on land as there is no law protecting their rights. Rural women should be saved from becoming a tool for other people's earning. In Bangladesh, women account for most unpaid work, and when women are employed in paid work, they are overrepresented in the informal sector and among the poor. While growth and stability are necessary to give women the opportunities they need, women's participation in the labour market is also a part of the growth and stability equation, said the WB report.
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