A Global Women’s Strike event for International Women’s Day 2023

Andhra Pradesh Natural Farming comes to Kentish Town! Wednesday 8 March, 5-7pm Kentish Town Library, London NW5 2AA Presented by Solveig Francis

BACKGROUND •

In 2021 Global Women’s Strike supported the massive year-long farmers’ & farmworkers’ protest against the three farm laws aimed at handing over agriculture to corporations.

•

In the process we heard about a remarkable women’s movement organized in Self-Help Groups which was leading a transformation to Natural Farming in the State of Andhra Pradesh.

•

We got in touch with Vijay Kumar who heads RySS [Farmers Empowerment Organisation] set up by the AP government to upscale Natural Farming. For decades he recognized women’s collective ability to bring about social and economic transformation.

•

In November 2022 we sent a team (India, UK, US) to meet this movement and spread the word.

The team at Bangalore, the start of our trip, 19 November 2022

WOMEN’S SELF-HELP GROUPS (SHG) • After the UN Decade for Women (1975-85), SHGs formed in AP to eradicate rural women’s poverty, illiteracy and violence against women. • In 1995 UN Development Programme funded a large-scale pilot with the SHGs in AP to increase women’s incomes and financial independence. The driving force behind its success was micro-credit and Vijay Kumar. Key principles • Women’s autonomy, control and ownership of their assets • Access resources and services • Increased decision-making in the family • Zero tolerance of violence • Raise the status of girls

Micro Credit •

Micro-credit generated from women’s own resources – each woman puts in one rupee (1p) a week.

•

Once funds raised (e.g. 100 rupees) group agrees mini loans to a few women to set up small informal businesses like a tea stall.

•

As women earn, they repay the loan at low interest – an extra rupee. As SHG funds grew, more loans were made to lease land, improve homes, cover emergencies...

SHG MEMBERSHIP – street level • 80-90% of women are in SHGs. Mostly from lowest incomes: Dalit and Adivasi (Tribal). SHGs pledge to eradicate ‘untouchability.’ • Each SHG has 10-15 members who live on same street or nearby. • They meet in a member’s home.

Self help group meeting in a member’s home

• Multi-generational: mothers, daughters/ mothers-in-law, grandmothers, teenagers. • Older women are often still illiterate, but financially literate and have a bank account. • Mainly full or part-time farmers, farm labourers, landless women, informal sector workers

SHG members in Adivasi area greet us

SHG MEMBERSHIP – village level and ward (Mandal) & District level • Each street SHG chooses its representative to the Village Organisations (VO). • VOs send a representative to the Women’s Federations (WF) at ward and district level.

Village Organisation meeting

• VOs & WFs have their own centres for meetings, training… and bank account. • Hindu, Muslim and Christian women come together in VO and WF meetings.

With the Women’s Federation, Anantapur, outside their centre

COUNTING THE WORK OF THE SHGs • SHGs meet weekly. Agree loans. Make and take payments. Share problems (family issues, financial difficulties, girls’ safety...) and aim to resolve them. • Village Organisations and Women Federations meet every three to four weeks. They deal with unresolved problems brought by the SHGs. Women's Federation Committee going through finances. The men are Community Resource People.

SOCIAL ACTION COMMITTEES TO RESIST SEXUAL VIOLENCE • Handle difficult cases. 10 SHG women chosen for their personal experience and ability to stand up to officials. • Run Gender Fund to take legal action - every SHG member donates one rupee a month to this Fund. • Unresolved cases go to a Community Managed Counselling Centre which includes SHG members. • The Centre deals with reporting rape/domestic violence to police – no-one goes alone, legal advice, health checks, emergency shelter for victim & her children, help with compensation, housing, pension, land disputes and alimony. Follow up support for three years.

SHG CAMPAIGNS • Equal wages • Against child marriage and girl infanticide • Protests outside police stations. Police say they fear demonstrations if don’t act appropriately. • Raise awareness among men and young people

Rally to launch End Discrimination Month, 25 November 2022.

WHY NATURAL FARMING? Mono-crops & chemicals used in industrial farming are a major cause of global warming, only now being recognised. • Andhra Pradesh is an agricultural state. Most farms are small (1-2 acres). • Had the highest level in India of farmers in debt to corporations for fertilizer and seeds. • High rate of farmer suicides due to debts and falling income • High use of chemicals depleted the soil. Yields went down, crops failed. • Rainwater wasted despite drought conditions as bare soil can’t hold water. • Malnutrition and sickness. • Women having to feed their families bear the economic and emotional brunt of debts and suicides of husbands, sons, brothers. AP Community Managed Natural Farming aims to solve these problems & restore farmers' livelihoods.

NINE PRINCIPLES of AP COMMUNITY MANAGED NATURAL FARMING

WOMEN’S SHGs ARE THE CORE OF NATURAL FARMING MOVEMENT SINCE 2016

Adivasi farmer with her husband, started natural farming three years ago.

•

NF first proposed to men in 2014/15, who had the land titles – assumed to be the main farmers.

•

It didn’t work. Men unused to co-operating, less swayed by family health arguments.

•

Women do most of the farm work – 75% women versus 55% men.

•

As NF not happening with the men, Mr Kumar said go to the women’s Self-Help Groups.

•

Understanding the harm to children’s health by toxic chemicals a big factor for women.

•

Once a few SHG women embraced NF, others followed. Women persuaded their husbands.

140,000 SHGs and 5,386 Federations now engaged in promoting NF • Women farmers who encourage others to start NF become Champion Farmers. • Champion Farmers take NF to other communities and become Lead Farmers. • Lead farmers become Master Trainers supporting farmers in other villages and districts. • Farmer-to-farmer training and ‘hand holding’ are vital to the transformation. Two Lead Farmers

Women Master Trainers in the field with GWS team (left) - training men farmers (right)

GWS team with Master Trainer

Training men farmers

LANDLESS WOMEN & KITCHEN GARDENS • Landless women, often single mothers, are supported to grow their own food in kitchen gardens outside their homes. • Kitchen gardens are a way to ensure basic food and nutrition needs are met, provide some food security. • Applying NF methods some food can be grown all year round. • Landless women can also access degraded land from the State, and bring it back to life.

Leafy vegetables and herbs in kitchen garden

• Thousands of landless women now have a kitchen garden, also called a ‘nutri-garden. • It is designed to grow a variety of vegetables, pulses and fruits to provide food throughout the year, and make the best use of water. • Nutri-gardens are also grown in preschool child care centres and schools.

Preparing a kitchen garden in the ‘solar’ layout

WORKING COLLECTIVELY Women prepare seeds and bio-stimulants, one called ‘nectar of life’, for their farms and gardens

Coating seeds to protect and nourish them when germinating

Ingredients for natural bio stimulants pest deterrents etc.

Women-led ‘bio-villages’ are the most advanced These are found in Adivasi (Tribal) areas, which always rejected chemicals.

Naturally farmed rice in Adivasi areas

Adivasi home with kitchen garden

SCALING UP NATURAL FARMING • Village organisations & Women’s Federations monitor the transition to NF. • By end March 2023, one million farmers & half million farmworkers enrolled to practice NF. • Goal: six million farmers and two million farm workers to be natural farmers by 2031.

VO chart showing progress towards Natural Farming

With NF methods regeneration of the soil and its benefits happen quickly.

Growing different vegetables, fruit trees, flowers and herbs together.

Natural Farming is part of teacher training & the curriculum from infant school

BENEFITS OF COMMUNITY MANAGED NATURAL FARMING • Regeneration of the soil = healthier crops more resilient to drought or flood • Higher or similar yields with less seeds used (up to 8 times less for rice) • Revival of local hardy seeds (over 100 varieties of rice) • Greater variety of grains, pulses and vegetables • Wildlife can flourish • Seed and food sovereignty – independence from corporations • Less water needed. 18 seed mixture to sow in between main crop and speed up soil regeneration

BETTER HEALTH, INCOMES & LESS WORK • Improved health: stronger children; lower blood pressure; less diabetes, asthma, anaemia • Lower medical bills • Lower costs, crops all-year round increase farmer incomes – 3 to 5 times higher. • Lighter workload – crops need less maintenance when soil is healthy

Healthy kids and their farmer mothers

• Community Resource health workers promote NF diet in village meetings. • Natural farmers are providing healthy food to hospitals, schools and temples (which give free meals). Community Resource Persons (Health) promote NF diet

HELPS REVERSE GLOBAL WARMING • Farmers become scientists – understand relationship between soil & plant health, nutrition, climate change. (But scientists still need to become farmers.) • Experimentation is continuous and lessons passed on. • NF restores the water cycle and keeps carbon in the ground, cooling the planet • Increasing planet’s green cover by 25% can achieve the cooling urgently needed. (Ref: Didi Pershouse/ Walter Jehne)

Shade and plants between trees keep moisture in the ground

BRINGING APCMNF TO OTHER STATE AND COUNTRIES Andhra Pradesh shares its experience nationally and internationally.

• Master Trainers learn Hindi to help bring NF to other States In India. • Discussion started between Manju Gardia, founder of NCMS (New Chhattisgarh Women’s Organisation in 1987 and on GWS team, and AP on how to bring NF benefits to the mostly landless women in NCMS. Meeting in Adivasi village in Chhattisgarh where women won land titles

NATURAL FARMING IN AFRICA • Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), which fights corporate takeover of farming in Africa, and APCMNF are collaborating. • They hold joint webinars and produced this booklet as a guide for African farmers.

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS OF SHG MOVEMENT • Relationships between women and men are changed. • Women have power to do what they want to do without interference • Men are helpful • Poverty reduced • Domestic violence reduced • Less child marriage (before 18) • Dowry demands less common • More girls at school & for longer • Increased adult women’s literacy • Women seen as credit worthy for bank loans (often in preference to the men) • Welfare state – benefits paid directly to mothers e.G. For having girl children, school expenses…

• Vijay Kumar believes that the women farmers should be rewarded for their services to humanity. RySS has formed a committee to work out how this can be done. • They are not only caring for their families and communities, becoming scientists and teachers, but showing us all a way forward, away from the destructive path in front of us. • We agree! GWS is calling for a care income for all those caring for people and planet.

MORE INFORMATION Videos available at www.globalwomenstrike.net

Also see:

Including: A Care Income to Protect the Land, the People and the Natural World : our webinar at Oxford Real Farming Conference, 4 January 2023 with Selma James (GWS), Swati (RySS, Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Farming), and others.

Nature's Solutions as National Policy - with Walter Jehne (Climate and Soil Scientist), Vijay Kumar (Government Adviser, Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming, & Chellie Pingree (US Congresswoman and organic farmer)

Didi Pershouse - Land & Leadership Initiative https://www.didipershouse.com/Reports Restoring water cycles to naturally cool climate Walter Jehne https://soilcarboncoalition.org/walter-jehne-water/