From sharecropping to crop-rent: women farmers changing agricultural production relations in rural South Asia

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt () and Mohanraj Adhikari ()
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Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt: The Australian National University
Mohanraj Adhikari: The Australian National University

Agriculture and Human Values, 2016, vol. 33, issue 4, No 20, 997-1010

Abstract: Abstract This paper explores changing production relations in agriculture in context of increasingly widespread and longer-duration male outmigration, as against previous, short-duration and seasonal migration. It investigates how de facto women-heads of households (WHHs) are changing a resilient crop-sharing system in absence of adequate access to productive assets, formal training or experience in farming, and while contributing labour to farming and coping with gendered demands on their time. Based on qualitative inquiry in one of the poorest parts of South Asia, the Eastern Gangetic Plains, the paper shows that a section of WHHs are replacing sharecropping arrangements with fixed-value rental arrangements that resemble commercial contracts. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of this emerging development.

Keywords: Feminisation of agriculture; Changes in sharecropping; Women-heads of households in farming; Women and agriculture; Eastern Gangetic Plains; Household gender relations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-015-9666-z

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