Impact of Modern Agricultural Technology on the Livelihoods of Rural Women

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to determine the impact of selected modern agricultural technologies on the livelihoods of rural women of Garadia village under Phulpur upazila of Mymensingh district. The selected agricultural technologies are Llivestock and Poultry Production Technology (LPPT), Home based Vegetable Production Technology (HVPT) and Crop Production Technology (CPT). Women are classified into three categories namely never poor, occasionally poor and usually poor on the basis of their family land holding, income, food security, employment, education, and social networks. The impact of modern agricultural technologies on the livelihoods of rural women are studied based on six livelihood outcome indicators namely, income, food security, well-being, empowerment, vulnerability and access to institutions. The rural women are found mostly involved in crop production technology, homestead vegetable production technology and livestock and poultry production technology for supplementary income of the households. The adoption of modern agricultural technologies have 'moderate' to 'good' impact on the livelihoods of about 86 percent of the rural women of the study area. Among the three selected modern agricultural LPPT recorded the highest livelihood index of 1384 followed by HVPT and CPT with livelihood indices of 1092 and 403, respectively. The study indicates that among the agricultural technologies, LPPT has the most significant influence on the present improvement of the livelihoods of rural women. The women are also very keen to involve in HVPT. Alongside of LPPT and HVPT home based post-harvest processing of crops such as threshing, winnowing, drying, parboiling and storage of crops are the important activities, where women are actively involved. The study also reveals that most of the benefits go in favour of the 'never poor' category of rural women (total livelihood index 1423) followed by 'occasionally poor' (TLI=793) and a limited impact to 'usually poor' category (TLI-503). In any future livelihood strategy formulation for the rural women the involvement of 'usually poor' women need to be ensured, so that they can not be left out of the main stream development.