Women entrepreneurs build back rural value chains
Access to quality food products at a fair price has been a challenge for rural and urban customers. Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) has been focusing on strengthening the agriculture value chain by supporting women farmers as entrepreneurs and key players in the agri-allied products. For the last five years, SSP has been supporting thousands of women farmers in collectivizing and selling their products in both local and urban markets. Madhuri Jadhav is a women entrepreneur from Osmanabad district who is involved in value addition activities, thus creating an impact on household food and income security. In 2020, she joined SSP and began organic vegetable cultivation.
She also joined a Farmer Producers Group that focused on organic pulses and grains and another group of 30 women who would buy their seeds, cultivate the crop using organic methods and package and market their produce collectively. To ensure quality, SSP provided trainings on processing the dal as well as packaging, labelling and marketing the finished product. They supported the women in forming networks and linkages with hotels and markets in surrounding areas.
In October 2021, Madhuri invested in a pulse processing unit after watching two other women successfully operating these machines. By investing her own money and taking a small loan from her SHG, she procured a small unit from Sakhi Unique Rural Enterprise (SURE). Since then, Madhuri has increased her earnings to over Rs. 9000 per month, and processed around 3 quintals worth of pulses from over 20 farmers in her village.
The story of Madhuri Jadhav shows the importance of engaging rural women in enterprises, and supporting them in moving up the product value chain. The entire process of moving away from the home and into markets and decision-making spaces empowers grassroots women, who are now taking active leadership roles and negotiating with local governments and financial institutions for access to finance and better markets.