Kerala Agriculture University mulls fallow lands to women farmers

THRISSUR: The Kerala Agriculture University (KAU) is planning to submit a proposal to the state government for making available large tracts of wetland lying fallow in the district on lease to Joint Liability Groups (JLG) for women commercial farmers. Several such groups had raised the issue of acute shortage of land in the district to cultivate paddy and vegetables as the land owners were reluctant to hand over the land to them on lease.

“The groups have brought to light the dire need to introduce effective guidelines for hired land farming in the context to ensure farming in fallow land available. This was the main topic of contention raised by the women groups during the face-to-face programme organised by Centre for Gender Studies in Agriculture under Kerala AgriculturalUniversity (KAU) at Thrissur the other day,” Dr P.S. Geethakutty, professor and head, CGSAFED told this newspaper.  

Going by the date available with KAU, there are as many as 20,000 women who are part of such groups in Thrissur and if local bodies across the state are able to provide land on lease to such groups, as per the proposal the Centre has prepared, more than three lakh women commercial farmers in such groups would be benefited.

The reluctance of land owners to lease out even fallow lands and provide written agreements to the enthusiastic women groups impede their access to farmer support services from department of agriculture like subsidies, insurance, crop compensation. Other important problems faced by them for profitable farming are the lack of steady market arrangements and non-availability of value addition infrastructure, she said.

The centre is also planning to suggest to the state government to invoke the provision in the Paddy Field and Wetland Conservation Act for making available unused paddy fields for the women groups. Ms Geethakutty said that several land owners were no willing to lease out the land fearing that if farming was done in paddy fields, they would not be able to fill up the wetlands in future.