Since ancient times, women have played an important role in community building. Be it household chores or doing a job or running a business, they play a significant role. Similarly, women also play a crucial role in agricultural development and allied fields. The extent of women’s involvement in agriculture varies greatly from region to region. Regardless of this, women are actively involved in various agricultural activities. On this Women’s Day, we would like to shine a spotlight on the women in the agricultural sector and take note of their massive contributions.

As per reports, women grow as much as 80% of India’s food and nearly 75% of the full-time workers are women. However, only 12.8 per cent of the operational holdings were owned by women. Rural women perform numerous labour intensive jobs such as weeding, hoeing, grass-cutting, picking, cotton stick collection, separation of seeds from fibre, raising livestock and associated activities like milking, milk processing, preparation of ghee, etc.

Women are majorly involved in agricultural activities, livestock management and backyard poultry farming. Let’s have a closer look at the activities in which women are involved.

1. Agriculture

Depending on the socio-economic status of women’s family and region, rural women are engaged in agricultural activities in three different ways such as paid labourers, cultivators and managers or labour supervisors. Under these broad categories, women are involved in following types of agricultural activities – sowing, nursery management, transplanting, weeding, irrigation, fertilizer application, plant protection, and harvesting, winnowing, storing etc.

2. Livestock Management

Livestock is the primary livelihood activity used to meet household food needs as well as to supplement farm income. Apart from working on fields, women are also engaged in cattle management activities. Rural women earn extra income by selling milk and animal produce. Women do the following activities – cleaning animal sheds, giving food and water to animals, milking cattle, fodder collection, collecting dung to make dung cakes and preparing manure. Men on the other hand share the responsibility of taking care of sick animals. It is evident that women play the dominant role in livestock management activities.

3. Backyard Poultry Farming

This is the third major sector women take care of. Backyard poultry farming is one of the major sources of income in rural areas. According to the Indian government’s National Action Plan for Egg & Poultry-2022 (NAPEP), backyard poultry accounts for 20 percent of India’s poultry sector, which is worth over ₹800 billion. Around 30 million farmers are engaged in backyard poultry production across the country.

Interestingly female farmers work almost twice the time in fields as compared to male farmers – women work about 3,300 hours in a crop season as compared to 1,860 hours by men. As per reports, less women have access to the state mandis as compared to men. As mandis are male dominated areas, most women avoid going to mandis. And even those who go, take a male family member with them or schedule their visits. Most opt to sell their produce to village middleman at lower prices. That being said, they still contribute to the overall agricultural output in a big way.

While the agricultural output is increasing, it increases the sale of these produce in mandis also. The increased inflow also increases the workload for commission agents in mandis. Be it bill generation or inventory management, they have to invest a lot of time and effort in mandi accounting. A single mistake or miscalculation could increase their workload. Understanding the concerns of commission agents, Bijak which is India’s Number 1 Agritrading App, came up with a mandi accounting solution called ChargeERP. It is aimed to help commission agents with mandi accounting activities like bill generation, managing inventory and keeping track of payments. This ultimately allows them to invest more time in growing their business.

ChargeERP is the solution

ChargeERP accounting software has been designed keeping in mind the daily interactions of commission agents in agricultural mandis. It is a cloud-based accounting software introduced with the core aim of reducing the agent’s workload. ChargeERP is the easiest, fastest and most secure mandi accounting software available in India. One of the many benefits of this platform is that it can be accessed from anywhere and from multiple devices. It provides data security with end-to-end encryption. Plus, it doesn’t require any kind of technical or accounting expertise.

If you are looking to explore more about this next-level accounting software, feel free to dial +91 9311341199 or visit www.chargeerp.com, and request your free demo today. We also suggest that you follow us on Facebook for regular updates. You can also view the latest instructional videos on the ChargeERP YouTube channel.