Seed and varietal choices of farmers: Does gender matter?

by Afreen Khan¹, Mamatha Goundla², Ranjitha Puskur¹

¹ International Rice Research Institute
²Centre for Sustainable Agriculture

Introduction

Seeds are vital to agriculture, affecting productivity, climate resilience, nutritional outcomes, and biodiversity (Kramer and Galiè, 2020). The choice of seed is not just about yield or technical performance. It is a negotiation between tradition and innovation, between household food needs, market incentives and often, between men’s decisions and women’s lived knowledge. While agriculture in India is increasingly shaped by modern technologies and market priorities, the question of who chooses what seed and why remains deeply contextual and gendered.

In most farming households, men typically interact with dealers, access subsidies, and decide on commercial crops. Women, however, spend their days sowing, weeding, harvesting, cooking, and saving seed, carry an intimate understanding of which varieties withstand drought, survive poor rains, or cook well. Excluding them from these decisions, sidelines half of the farming population and risks losing traits critical for food security (Puskur, 2021).

To unpack these dynamics, IRRI and Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) conducted a study in 2024 across 20 villages in 15 districts of Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Telangana which are not just rice bowls of India but are also critical seed landscapes for a wide range of crops – from rice, maize, cotton to pulses, millets and vegetables. Together they supply about 85% of India’s hybrid rice seed needs, especially from districts like Karimnagar, making these states critical nodes in seed system. We explored varietal decision-making, seed access pathways, and the associated knowledge systems in a qualitative study engaging 390 farmers (170 women and 220 men) through 21 gender-segregated Focus Group Discussions (FGDs).