Improving access to social security among smallholder cotton farmers

Improving access to social security among smallholder cotton farmers

Encouraging smallholder farmers to adopt new practices is difficult, even when evidence of long-term socioeconomic and biodiversity benefits is shown. Smallholder farmers are often more vulnerable, encounter pressure on time and resources and face multiple climate change challenges.

Many smallholder cotton farmers, especially women, face persistent and often inter-related barriers. For example, they lack land rights as well as access to social security and financial instruments, such as insurance.

To address this, we’ve started a project with partners Haqdarshak and Myrada in India, to support Primark Cotton Project farmers in accessing social security. We first needed to identify the access challenges, so we interviewed over 1,500 women farmers in the Warangal and Mahbubabad districts. We learned that:

• 87% had limited awareness of the government schemes available to them. Among agricultural support schemes, most farmers were familiar only with the highest-profile programmes;
• 40% of women in both districts belonged to ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in India, which are more marginalised communities. However, the majority lacked the ‘caste certificates’ necessary to access special welfare schemes set up especially for them; and
• 67% identified a need to improve their digital and financial literacy skills, while 62% were deterred by the complex application processes.

As a result of these barriers, 48% of respondents have never benefited from any of the available government support schemes.

The research also assessed the most relevant agriculture-related government benefits farmers are entitled to but struggle to access. It prioritised subsidies that support farming activities, including those for tractor use and seed purchase.

Based on these findings, the next phase of the project will train 35 Field Executives from the Primark Cotton Project to support 4,000 farmers to navigate the barriers identified. A first step will be to provide the farmers with digital and financial literacy training to help them access and make effective use of the benefits available.

We are also partnering with India’s Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) to help the cotton farmers in Gujarat, India, form clusters that act as knowledge and support groups. These allow farmers to use their collective power to lower input costs, access credit and form market linkages. With our support, SEWA has selected and started to train 25 project farmers on setting up these hubs. The next step is to create the first cluster by identifying members and establishing the management structure.