Generations of women in Sampreetha’s family have worked on their rice fields. During the Covid-19 lockdown, Sampreetha, who goes by her first name, was pursuing a master’s degree in agriculture. When her college closed, she returned home to Sakleshpur, Karnataka, and began helping on the family’s six-acre farm. She soon realised that paddy cultivation involved a chain of menial, labour-intensive tasks, most of them carried out by women.

Women farmers may not be familiar with the term “climate change”, but they constantly feel its effects on their bodies and in their pockets, she observes. “They don’t know the words ‘adaptation’ or ‘mitigation’. But they say, ‘it didn’t feel like this 10 years ago. Earlier, the rains came in June or July, but now they are late’,” Sampreetha says.

Paddy cu

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