Agriculture is a key focus of the rural development agenda since three out of every four poor people in the developing world live in rural areas, and the majority relies on agriculture to survive. Given that many of these developing economies predicted to remain predominantly rural until at least 2020, improvements in agricultural productivity are important in creating rural growth and reducing poverty. Nearly halving rural poverty rates between 1993 and 2002 in East Asia and the Pacific regions attributed to the agricultural improvements of the ‘Green Revolution’! Increased income in the agricultural sector is also expected to increase of economic activity in other areas as well. Estimates of agriculture’s multiplier effect on local non-farm economies have been put at around 1.5.

However, common characteristic of all these rural based developing economies is the dominance of agricultural employment by small subsistence farms that are over 75%, and woman make up the majority of the agricultural workforce. As opined by World Bank, improving the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of smallholder farming is the main pathway out of poverty in using agriculture for development. Improving smallholder productivity is certainly challenging. In the face of increasingly challenging market and environmental conditions, it is important that the rural poor and particularly women are equipped with the skills to cope and adapt to ensure food security and improve income levels.

Studies indicate that women now make up over 50% of the agricultural sector in developing countries, but their productivity constrained by a lack of appropriate skills training. In the face of changing and erratic agricultural conditions, there is a huge premium on women’s ability to respond innovatively and to be adaptable, to ensure productivity of the agricultural sector and the food security.

In recent years, the empowerment of women is increasingly recognized as the central issue and in view of their critical role, it is essential to ensure those benefits of training, extension and various empowerment initiatives reach them in proportion to their numbers. It is a daunting task to upgrade skills and knowledge of the farm women where two-thirds of the adults worldwide who cannot read or write are women, though.

Women face significant barriers in accessing training - low literacy levels, domestic obligations and training that is targeted primarily at men. Addressing these challenges to improve women smallholders’ access to advanced and more relevant training is an important step in increasing agricultural productivity. A combination of agriculture and enterprise skills should be provided to enable them to respond to changing economic and environmental circumstances. Development, Structuring, implementation, monitoring and reviewing of training modules for mobilization of women for skill up-gradation is needed to enhance the skills and capacity building effectiveness. Relevant training needs to be accompanied by a range of supportive social, financial and technological factors for empowerment of women through agricultural skill up gradation effectively.

We do hope that SKILLS2010 International Conference will address the issue of fostering skills development among women for economic and social prosperity, the design and delivery thereof that enable rural women to respond successfully to the challenges they face.




Ravi K Reddy, September 10, 2010

Millennium Development Goal 2 is ‘Achieve universal primary education’ and the Target is to ‘Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.’ Official Indicators for monitoring progress in this regard are: 1. Net enrolment ratio in primary education; 2. Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach last grade of primary; and 3. Literacy rate of 15-24 year-olds, women and men.

Going by UNESCO Institute for Statistics update released in August 2010, significant achievements in expanding access to schooling made in many countries during the past decade; progress has not been universal though. The global aggregate net enrollment rate for primary education has increased to 88 % in 2008 while the global primary completion rate is put at 88 %. The global youth literacy rate has also been increasing and in 2007 it has been 89 percent.

Halfway towards 2015, more needs to be done to accelerate progress towards the achievement of MDG2. Here, it is pertinent to note the World Bank finding that an extra year of secondary schooling for girls can increase their future wages by 10 to 20 %.

Power of Water: India's first major hydroelectric power installation commissioned in 1902 at Sivasamudram currently located in Karnataka, It transmitted three megawatts of electricity 90 miles to the Kolar Gold Field mines.

ADB assessed India’s Hydro Power potential to the tune of 84,000MW and ranks fifth in the world in terms of usable potential; The installed generating capacity of Hydropower however constituted about 32,000 MW as of 31 March 2006 which means hardly about 40% has been developed so far.

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