Addressing issues of women entrepreneurship in vegetable farming: A study in Deogarh district of Odisha

The researchers examined women's roles in Kirtanpalli and Budido villages from Deogarh district of Odisha regarding their awareness levels and performance abilities and their perceived training needs through vegetable farming and processing and extension measures to boost female farmer entrepreneurship alongside skill and income enhancement. The study found that all interviewed women participated actively in vegetable compost development along with vegetable production and irrigation duties and harvesting activities but only 66.5 percent of women shared the management of income responsibilities and the same percentage of men handled vegetable marketing. All farm women had full access to water resources and seeds and planting materials while among them only half controlled irrigation systems and only 12.5 percent retained ownership of seeds and planting materials. Evaluation data indicated that the exclusion of farm women from banking credit access highlights an important issue of concern regarding their financial authority. The largest number of women work in packaging (90%) and after that they work in harvesting (62.5%). Farm women demonstrated the highest awareness about demand-driven produce and ranked them with a score of 1.8 after duration of growth and value-added products manufacturing which received scores of 1.73 and 1.38 respectively. The assessment of training requirements by agricultural women for skill improvement showed that they required post-harvest management knowledge and marketing expertise and practical information about harvesting and packaging techniques together with quality seed production methods.