How women of Nagaland village are corralling climate change

CHIZAMI ( NAGALAND ): Standing in a terraced paddy field, arms and legs coated in mud, Wetezou points to a barren area some 100 metres away and says: "The entire area used to be wet-terraced field, but has now become dry terrace. We plant vegetables there."


The concern in the voice of the 53-year-old farmer in Chizami is echoed in the words of every cultivator in this Nagaland village.

Lhikowe-u, 39, sits in the community shed of her clan after a hard day's work on her fields and explains how farming has undergone a sea change in the last two decades because of pest infestations and unpredictable rainfall pattern.

Like most parts of the state, Phek district - where Chizami is located - also suffered an attack by the fall armyworm pest this year. "We do not know what is wrong with the rains. At times, even proper rains aren't helping the crops," ruminates Lhikowe-u, who became a fulltime farmer after her marriage at 17.

Vagaries of climate are a big factor behind fertile lands rendered fallow. "Due to climate change , water in streams have reduced and aren't reaching all the fields. Nearly a third of our agricultural land is not being cultivated," Welhite Naro, Chizami village council chief, says.

A climate of change

Combined with the problem of men keeping off the fields and switching to cash crops, instead, erratic and scanty rainfall in recent years is posing fresh challenge to women farmers here.

But the women of Chizami, under the guidance of North East Network (NEN), have found strength in their farmers' collective and are showing a way forward to not just the state, but the whole of northeast. It is a model village, where women fought for eight years and in 2015 won the right to pay parity with men for non-specialised work.

NEN, a non-profit organization has been working in Nagaland for the last 21 years to promote women's rights.

“There’s exposure because of NEN. We are applying what we learn at seminars and workshops and share the knowledge among ourselves. We are now growing beans round the year. We are sowing a variety of crops at different times of the years to beat weather extremities,” Lhikowe-u says.

The women of Chizami have organized themselves and started a seed bank to support farmers when crops fail. The bank, set up in 2018, has 226 varieties of seeds with 35 types of paddy and seven types of foxtail millet stored in neatly arranged bamboo hollows and baskets and dried gourd shells. If a farmer takes a cob of maize or a cup of some seeds, he or she must return double the amount a year later. Members of the village women’s society maintain a logbook accounting for all the borrowing and lending.

“We are witnessing erratic climate conditions and pest attacks. The seed bank will provide food security to us.
With it, even in times of crop washouts, we won’t lose out completely,” says Adele, secretary of the village development board (VDB).

The seed bank promotes indigenous paddy varieties that are sturdier and resilient to extreme weather conditions. “We have exchanged seeds with farmers from states like Meghalaya and Telangana too,” Adele says.

A variety of pearl millet the women got from Hyderabad is growing well here.

Future tense

Today, the burden of cultivating food crops for sustenance has fallen upon the women.

“Increasingly, men have moved away from the arduous job of cultivating traditional crops. They prefer to earn as manual labourers in construction work, or just idle away their time playing chess and Ludo,” Wetezou says.

“Men who have studied till higher secondary don’t want to return to the fields, but they aren’t even finding jobs,” she says.

Working in the fields is laborious and men have been shirking ploughing and helping women with harvesting, their traditional roles. Not just that, men —the primary owners of land in patriarchal Naga society — are increasingly diverting their land for cash crops, which don’t need to be planted annually.

“I have kiwi, cardamom, and plum plantations for cash returns to help me manage the education of my sons,” Naro, the village council head, says.

The 60-year-old, who has a master’s in sociology from Jamia University in Delhi, acknowledges that land is being diverted to cash crops and says it is mostly to fund the education of children. But with the switch to cash crops, access of women to land for food crops is reducing.

The future looks grim. Today, women have access to community land through their fathers, brothers, and husbands. But, increasingly, land is being privatized and going into the hands of a few.

Wekoweu Tsuhah, the programme director of NEN in Nagaland, says this will jeopardise the security of single women in villages. “In 10 to 15 years, only afew individuals and families will control land. More trees are being planted for cash and landowners won’t allow women access to those land,” Tsuhah says.

For now, women are controlling food crops and feeding their families. They are also diversifying into vegetables and cereals like millets.

“Foxtail millet fetch Rs100 a kg and women are earning cash from cereals and vegetables they grow. They are taking decisions on the fields and getting more say in their family and in society now,” Naro says.

For now, the crowning glory is the village council of Chizami, the apex decision-making body, with two women among its six members — a huge stride in a patriarchal society where women were denied leadership roles for centuries.