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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the role of all-women Farmer Producer Organisations in enhancing women farmers’ agency and response to risks in drought-prone Kalaburagi, North Karnataka. It investigates how participation, household characteristics, and social structures shape women’s responses to climate risks.

Paper long abstract

Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) are increasingly promoted as vehicles for collectivising smallholder farmers; however, women’s participation in these institutions remains limited. Climate change is intensifying precarity through erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and declining agricultural productivity (Krishnan et al., 2020), contributing to high rates of male out migration and leaving women with expanded responsibilities in farming and household management (Pattnaik et al., 2017). In this context, women-led FPOs may hold significant potential to strengthen women’s economic security and agency. However, the conditions under which these organisations succeed or fail, or what participation in them means for the women involved, remains under explored.

This study focuses on Kalaburagi district in North Karnataka, a rain-fed and drought-prone agrarian region experiencing increasing rainfall variability. Drawing on Cleaver’s (2007) theory of collective agency and Cinner et al's (2018) framework on Adaptive Capacity, the study examines how household characteristics, social structures, and participation in all-women FPOs shape the agency of women farmers and how women understand and navigate climate- and livelihood-related risks within this context.