ICAR- CIWA organized National Webinar on “Nutritional Security: Challenges & Opportunities on Gender Sensitive Agriculture” on 25 March, 2021

A National Webinar on “Nutritional Security: Challenges & Opportunities on Gender Sensitive Agriculture” was organized by ICAR-Central Institute for Women in Agriculture, Bhubaneswar on 25 March, 2021. The webinar was organized with the objectives; to sensitize the participants about the gender sensitive agriculture and to create awareness about the new interventions and technologies for promoting women entrepreneurship for enhancing income and family nutrition. Dr. R. C. Agrawal, DDG, Agricultural Education, ICAR was the Chief Guest of the occasion. Guest of Honour of the Day, Dr. Archana Mukherjee, Former Director, ICAR-CTCRI, Thiruvananthapuram highlighted the importance of nutritional security, product diversification and multidisciplinary approach like GIS sensor based production management system, integrated farming system, policy reforms for balanced nutrition, consumption and value chain management for bring about gender sensitive agriculture. In his opening remarks, Dr. S. K. Srivastava, Director, ICAR-CIWA briefed about the importance of balanced nutritional diet for women. He emphasized the benefits of traditional foods and organic farming. The key note speech on ‘Opportunities, status and policies to promote nutrition sensitive agriculture for gender empowerment’ was delivered by Dr. Jatinder Kishtwaria, Former Director, ICAR-CIWA & ICAR-Emeritus Professor, CSKHPKV, Palampur. She threw light about the present scenario of nutrition status of Indian women and highlighted the strategies how to make linkages between nutrition and gender sensitive agriculture. She also highlighted the agricultural policies for providing nutrition literacy for the small farmers. Dr. Bikash Das, Principal Scientist, ICAR-RCER, Farming System Plateau Research Centre for Hill and Region, Ranchi, Jharkhand delivered the talk on ‘Mitigating malnutrition through gender inclusive agriculture’. He addressed malnourishment issues among women farmers and suggest to adopt a holistic approach involving agriculture, horticulture, mushroom cultivation and livestock sectors together. Dr. Shyam Raj Singh, Principal Scientist, ICAR-Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture, Lucknow in his lecture on ‘Gender sensitive modern horticultural techniques for augmenting income of farm women’ detailed about the recent interventions like vertical farming, roof-top gardening, hydroponics, aeroponics system through which women of peri-urban and urban area can get chemical free hygienic produce and can develop start-up. Dr. Ranjeet Singh, Principal Scientist & PI of the Agribusiness Incubation Centre, ICAR-Central Institute of Post-harvest Engineering and Technology, Ludhiana delivered the talk on ‘Women entrepreneurship through post-harvest value addition’. He elaborated on the process on agribusiness incubation and shared the success stories of the successful women entrepreneurs nurtured by ABI, ICAR-CIPHET. The webinar was attended by more than 100 participants included scientists, academicians, scholars and students from different ICAR institutes and SAU’s. Dr. Tania Seth, Scientist (Vegetable Science), ICAR-CIWA was the convener of the webinar and Dr. Lipi Das, Principal Scientist, ICAR-CIWA, Dr. Jyoti Nayak, Principal Scientist, ICAR-CIWA, and Dr. Sachidananda Swain, Scientist, ICAR-CIWA were the co-conveners of the webinar. The virtual webinar was digitally monitored by Mr. Neetish Kumar, Scientist, ICAR-CIWA.