INVOLEMENT OF THE FARM WOMEN IN DIFFERENT POST-HARVESTING ACTIVITIES IN KANPUR

Anchal Sharma. India is a one of the world's largest agriculture economy and has the second largest agricultural work force with two hundred sixty million workers. Agricultures in developing countries heavily dependent on manual labour and the major contribution comes from women. Women are central to selection, cultivation, preparation and harvest of food crops. Involvement of the farm women in post-harvesting activities belonged to both near by and faraway city in different post harvesting operations. 83.33 per cent and 16.67 per cent resource poor farm women of far away city were found having full and partial involvement in carrying farm produce to threshing floor respectively. Hence, it can be summarized that resource poof farm women of far away city had their full involvement in all post harvesting operations except threshing through machine.

India is a one of the world's largest agriculture economy and has the second largest agricultural work force with two hundred sixty million workers. Agricultures in developing countries heavily dependent on manual labour and the major contribution comes from women. Women are central to selection, cultivation, preparation and harvest of food crops. Involvement of the farm women in post-harvesting activities belonged to both near by and faraway city in different post harvesting operations. 83.33 per cent and 16.67 per cent resource poor farm women of far away city were found having full and partial involvement in carrying farm produce to threshing floor respectively. Hence, it can be summarized that resource poof farm women of far away city had their full involvement in all post harvesting operations except threshing through machine.

Introduction:-
Agricultures in developing countries heavily dependent on manual labour and the major contribution comes from women. Women are central to selection, cultivation, preparation and harvest of food crops. Women farmers also possess a unique knowledge of dairying, animal husbandry and fish farming and handle most of the work associated with it.Women are responsible for 70 per cent of actual farm work and constitute up to 60 per cent of farming population. He also stated that role of women in agriculture is substantial and significant. In past, historians believe that it was women who first started cultivation of crops and initiated with arts, science of farming. Contribution of farm women in agricultures can not be ignored because they played considerable role in various agricultural activities such as pre-sowing, sowing and transplanting operations . Women's role was also reported in the preparation of compost and rising of vegetables nursery. Their role was found to be maximum in hoeing and weeding practices on intercultural operations. Harvesting and post harvesting operations were reportedly more suited to the physical condition of women. Reaping of crops, storage of food grains, storage of seed and processing of grains were reported to be mostly done by women.A study on decision making role of women in agriculture was conducted by Oberoy (1995) and it was found that technical development during the green revolution has resulted in a decrease of women's involvement. This approach was to bring them back in to the mainstream. The role of women in technical development in agriculture received special attention. It has not surfaced in discussion on development strategies earlier. The need for uplifting rural women could not be ignored or neglected any longer.

Research methodology:-
The study was carried out by Descriptive Research Design method. Multistage purposive random sampling design was used to select the study area and respondents. Present study and now Kanpur district divided into 10 blocks and out of them, two blocks were selected randomly ( Chit system). A list of total villages falling in each block was prepared separately. One village situated near by city and one village located faraway to city of each selected block were randomly selected. From each selected village, 15 resource rich farm women and 15 resource poor farm women of each selected block were selected randomly. Thus, total 30 resource rich and poor farm women of nearby city, 30 resource rich and poor farm women of faraway city. Total sample of 120 farm women were prepared on the basis of purposive cum random sampling. Improved farm tools of various farm operations which are mainly performed by farm women in Kanpur District were selected purposively. [Improved sickles, OUAT paddy thresher, CRRI rice winnower, Standing type ground nut decorticator and Rotary maize sheller.] .

Selection and construction of tool:-
For accomplishment the present investigation, the pre-coded interview schedule was constructed in order to elicit information needed to obtain the objective of the study. Before constructing schedule, a preliminary survey was conducted in farm to make rapport and become aware with problems faced by farm women through asking informal question with farm and their supervisor. The perusal of Table (1) It is explicit that cent per cent resource rich farm women of nearby city had no involvement in threshing through machine and carrying farm produce to threshing floor followed by 66.67% per cent resource rich farm women having no involvement in hand threshing, winnowing and care of seeds and grain. Further, drying and cleaning of produce was fully performed by cent per cent resource rich farm women of near by city followed by minimum 16.67 per cent farm women having their full involvement in hand threshing, whereas maximum 33.33 per cent of resource rich farm women of nearby city had their partial involvement in winnowing operation and care of seeds and grain and minimum, 16.67 per cent of farm women having partial involvement in hand threshing. Thus, it can be said that drying and cleaning of produce was fully performed along with winnowing and care of seeds and grain partially and threshing through machine not performed by resource rich farm women of nearby city.

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Table (1) also shows that majority of resource rich farm women of far away city (73.33%) had their no involvement in threshing through machine followed by carrying farm produce to threshing floor (66.67%), winnowing (50.00%), care of seeds and grain (50.00%) and hand threshing (26.67%) respectively. Further, cent per cent resource rich farm women of far away city were fully involved in drying and cleaning of produce followed by 50.00 per cent of farm women, fully involved in hand threshing and minimum, 16.67 per cent resource rich farm women of far away city having their full involvement in winnowing and care of seed and grain. On the other hand, maximum, 33.33 per cent resource rich farm women of far away city were found having their partial involvement in winnowing, care of seed and grain and carrying farm produce to threshing floor followed by 26.67 per cent and minimum 23.33 per cent resource rich farm women of far away city having partial involvement in threshing through machine and hand threshing respectively. Overall findings suggests that drying and cleaning of produce was fully performed by resource rich farm women of far away city whereas winnowing, care of seed and grain and carrying farm produce to threshing floor were partially performed by them. Full involvement of resource poor farm women of near by city was found maximum in drying and cleaning of produce (100%) followed by winnowing (73.33%) and care of seed and care (73.33%) and minimum 60.00 per cent in hand threshing. whereas partial involvement was maximum in carrying farm produce to threshing floor (83.33%) followed by threshing through machine (33.33%), winnowing (26.67%), care and seeds (26.67%) and minimum in hand threshing (6.67%) respectively. Further, majority of resource poor farm women of near by city having no involvement in threshing through machine (66.67%) followed by hand threshing (33.33%) and carrying farm produce to threshing floor (16.67%) respectively.
On the other hand, cent per cent resource poor farm women of far away city had their full involvement in hand threshing, winnowing, drying and cleaning of produce, and care of seeds and grain except threshing through machine having not performed by cent percent resource poor farm women of far away city.

Summary and conclusion:-
It is concluded from the present study that of findings of table (1) it can be summarized that among all farm operations of post-harvesting, involvement of Cent per cent resource poor farm women of far away city had their full involvement in hand threshing, winnowing, drying and cleaning of produce, and care of seeds and grain except threshing through machine having not performed by cent percent resource poor farm women of far away city. Moreover 83.33 per cent and 16.67 per cent resource poor farm women of far away city were found having full and partial involvement in carrying farm produce to threshing floor respectively.

Review:-
Thakur and Verma (1998) found that operation viz., pesticide dusting, spade working during field irrigation, ploughing, sowing, manure and fertilizer application and marketing of grains were exclusively performed by men. Transplanting and storage of grain were found to be exclusive domain of women. The other farm operations like weeding, harvesting, carrying load on head were performed jointly predominantly by women. Women of landless category performed more work in crop cultivation. Thus, it may be inferred that involvement of women in agriculture operations was higher than men in all landholding categories.
Badiger and Huilgol (2004) stated that the nature and extent of women's involvement in agriculture and animal husbandry activities were varied greatly from region to region and even within a region. It varied widely among different farming systems and socio-agronomic status of families. In agricultural operation with respect to the amount of work, maximum numbers of women were participating in cleaning of the grains, fertilizer application, gap filling, transplanting, sowing, grazing, nursery for seedling, picking, drying, etc.

Das (2004)
included that rural women participation in all kinds of agricultural operations like transporting of seedlings, sowing, weeding and application of fertilizer, 96 per cent women were involved in animal rearing. As far as participation of rural women in decision making in matters related to agricultural operations and family affairs was concerned, 98 per cent women were consulted in marriage of their children, 68 per cent women were not consulted in money matters i.e. taking or giving loan. Most of the women were consulted in selection of seed, storage and selling of farm product.