Marathwada’s Women Rely on Ingenious Cropping Technique to Navigate Climate Uncertainty

In Dharashiv, Marathwada, farmers have contended with drought for decades. Over the last 10 years, that pattern has shifted, giving way to torrential spells of rain that disrupt sowing cycles and devastate cash crops. Sangamitra Ankushrao’s family grew soya, a crop that needs rain at the sowing stage and dry conditions as it grows. When the cultivation responsibilities passed on to her, Sangamitra replaced monoculture farming with multicropping—growing gavar, mirchi, and shepu, alongside soya. Due to this—despite excess rainfall in 2023 which destroyed the soya crops—her losses were contained.

However, Sangamitra does not own the land she works on. Swayam Shikshan Prayog, a non-government organisation working with grassroots women’s collectives, has been involved with women farmers in the region for 20 years, running regular workshops on zero-cost production and sustainable practices while also helping them secure land rights. The women farmers here battle an ecological crisis alongside a social one. They have a modicum of cultivation rights, that is, the freedom to decide what grows and how, but continue to work fields they do not own. This exemplifies a recurring pattern visible across similar stories and ground reports where the onus of adaptive strategies and agroecological practices falls on small-scale women farmers. However, land rights and the socio-economic benefits of their labour continue to be elusive.