THE LOCAVORE TEAM | 7 SEPTEMBER 2026
Women are central to India’s food systems—as cultivators, seed-keepers, processors, cooks, livestock rearers, forest and coastal food workers, and informal market actors—yet their labour and leadership remain underrepresented in mainstream narratives about farming and rural livelihoods.
When women do appear in climate or agriculture storytelling, they are often framed in reductive ways, flattening the complexity of their daily work, their struggles and joys, and their lived realities.
Timed with the UN-declared International Year of the Woman Farmer (2026), the Woman Farmer Project places women’s food labour front and centre, while intentionally resisting simplification. The Project features women farmers and women food workers as knowledge-holders, decision-makers, and cultural anchors, examining their role in food, labour, and care systems.
The Project brings together storytellers, grassroots partner organisations, media training partners, and community distribution networks to document these stories and circulate them in ways that remain meaningful to the communities themselves.
The Project goes beyond just producing stories; it also asks what ethical collaboration in storytelling can look like in practice. How can grassroots organisations meaningfully shape stories, and not just facilitate access? What does it take to support young women storytellers without extraction or performative inclusion? How does community-rooted distribution change the afterlife and usefulness of climate stories? What forms of collaboration are sustainable, ethical, and worth reproducing?
Through the Project, The Locavore aims to build a practical model for collaborative storytelling that centers communities, accountability, and long-term relationships.
Project Objectives
The Collaboratives
The Woman Farmer Project is part of a global initiative by the Doc Society Climate Story Kitchen, called ‘The Collaboratives’, bringing leading cultural organisations, storytellers, and community networks from India, Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil to work together in intentional partnership and explore new models for climate storytelling. Through the year, each country’s team will develop and test collaboration models that strengthen climate narratives while sharing learnings across regions.
“We’ve been longtime admirers of The Locavore and the innovative ways the team has produced great journalism, created immersive experiences, and built extensive community networks, in pursuit of providing the inspiration, joy, and commitment to a more climate-just future. We are excited by the potential of the Woman Farmer Project, and The Locavore‘s approach to supporting community-led narratives and galvanising an expansive ecosystem of partners and allies who can bring these stories into the mainstream.”
— Megha Agrawal Sood, Co-Executive Director, Doc Society
“By the end of this project, I hope we have done more than produce a strong body of stories and engagements. I hope we have helped make women’s food labour more visible, more legible, and harder to ignore—not as a side note to agriculture or climate change, but as something central to how food systems actually function.”
— Chef Thomas Zacharias, Founder, The Locavore
The 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.