Female Farmers in India Unite Against Climate Change Threat

Millions of women are being thrust into harm by climate change. In rural India, a generation-defining program promoting collaboration among them is helping alleviate the threats it poses.

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By Gordon Cole-Schmidt

Across the flat plains of Bihar, India’s poorest states, weary farmers plough the cracked, crumbling earth by hand. Few trees grow tall enough to shelter the farmers from the sun, which has starved the rivers and scorched the leaves from bushes.  

It is early March in Madhubani, among the country’s most climate-vulnerable districts. Across the endless fields in Bisfi, a small village in the Madhubani district of North Bihar, colorful saris and headscarves which bob above the endless lines of wheat mark the majority of farmers out as women.

Summer began in February this year, a month earlier than usual. Heatwaves started in northern parts of the country, and higher than average temperatures continued through March and April. Today, 76% of India’s population lives in places considered  at high or very high risk from extreme heat. 

In Bihar, the climate has become so extreme and unpredictable that tens of millions must survive through intensive droughts for roughly nine months of the year, before monsoon rains come, lashing into the concrete-like earth. The downpours are so strong that whole settlements have been washed away, displacing millions of the most vulnerable people in Bihar overnight. 

Over 80% of Bihar’s population today works in agriculture. Millions of livelihoods hang in the balance as more extreme heat, elongated droughts and catastrophic flash floods in monsoon season have severely weakened the financial stability of smallholder farms.

Smaller yields, shortened work seasons and prolonged debt cycles have seen fathers and sons increasingly emigrate to larger cities like New Delhi for work, only returning to their families during the harvest months.  

Today, two-thirds of working women in India labour on farms compared to just one-third of men, according to the latest government figures.

Wives and daughters like Sanju Devi, a farmer from Bihar, bear the brunt of the agricultural labor, often alone. 

A local female leader in agriculture walks through her rural settlement in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Photo: Mirja Vogel.

Bihar Women Are the Backbone of Rural Transformation

According to a 2023 report, women will suffer more from extreme heat as more frequent heatwaves on a warming planet pose a growing threat to their work, earnings and lives.

“Women in poverty are being pushed further into poverty, and women climbing out of poverty are being pulled back in,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, Director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.

As average temperatures continue to rise in India, daily work on the fields for women like Devi has become more strenuous. Headaches, dizziness, exhaustion, and skin and eye irritation are common. A 2023 study of 194,871 ever-partnered women aged 15 to 49 years from three South Asian countries (India, Nepal, and Pakistan) found that each 1C-increase in average annual temperature led to a 4.5% increase in intimate partner violence.

“Women are the backbone of rural transformation in Bihar,” said Sonmani Choudhary, Program Director of Heifer International, a non-profit organization working on the ground in Bihar.

To support smallholder women living in marginalized circumstances in Bihar, Heifer International initiated the Bihar Sustainable Livelihood Development (BSLD) program in early 2020. The non-profit aims to improve the livelihoods of 70,000 families by the end of 2025 through increasing income, nutrition, and resilience. 

But as cases of Covid-19 soared in Bihar during the project’s first months, accessing the communities proved difficult.

“We faced many challenges at the start, most notably the pandemic,” Randhir Kumar, the Senior Program Manager, explained. “Millions of women here were particularly isolated during this time, and it was very difficult to reach them.”

In a small literacy class organized by Heifer International in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, participants learn the basics of reading and arithmetic to improve their access to agricultural markets. Photo: Mirja Vogel.

Heifer International first identified the six districts most urgently-in-need in Bihar, including Madhubani, and quickly partnered with local organizations on the ground. 

“Our partners, deeply rooted in the local context, brought with them an invaluable understanding of the region’s social dynamics, cultural practices, language, and behavioural patterns — all of which are essential for building trust, promoting participation, and driving sustained community engagement,” said Choudhary.

Creating Women-Run Collectives 

Heifer International set up over 200 women-only groups, each with approximately 20 members, in 2020. They hosted weekly meetings to discuss daily challenges on the farms, which quickly became platforms for resource and knowledge sharing, offering a short reprieve from isolation at home for many. 

“These meetings were the first time we had really spoken to each other,” said Rubi Devi, a female farmer and member of the group in Bisfi. “We realized many of the problems we individually faced were common between us all.”

Heifer International formed their first large organization by collating several of the smaller community groups into one larger, more resilient collective, known as  Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs).

Female agricultural workers who had been struggling through isolation were for the first time able to pool their resources and their outputs together, allowing them to participate in larger markets.

Sanju Devi (left), President of Bisfi’s FPO, and Sonia Devi (right) gather nutrient-enriched feed for goats at the FPO’s headquarters in Bisfi. Photo: Mirja Vogel.

Today, the FPO in Bisfi counts almost 1,000 members. Their main focus is making and selling supplemented goat fodder, which had been in great demand prior to the collective’s formation. 

Pooling their money together means they can secure far better rates directly from the wholesale supplier for each ingredient needed. They are able to mix it together at the organization’s headquarters – a large wooden barn equipped with a new seed dispensary and mills – and then sell the enhanced mix to farmers across the state. 

“Economically, the project has enabled women to initiate collective businesses related to goat rearing and agricultural produce through women-led Farmer FPOs across all project locations,” said Choudhary.

In Bihar, there were clear signs of women taking on leadership roles in a society long ruled by men. 

Devi is now the President of Bisfi’s FPO. She wakes at 5 a.m. every morning, cooks, cleans and takes her children to the local school. She usually arrives at the headquarters by early afternoon to meet with the team, to ensure orders are being fulfilled and new stock has been purchased. 

At the time of the interview, she was leading the team through the financials for the second quarter of 2025. For the fiscal year of 2024-25, her FPO generated over 2.4 million rupees (US$27,300).

After the meeting, sat alongside the Secretary, Treasurer and Vice President of the organization, she said: “I spent nearly all my time at home for two years before this project began. After I was first invited, I realized things were changing for me. Now I have a lot of responsibility here and I really enjoy it. Now we want to grow and grow.”

Members of the FPO, including Sanju Devi in pink, meet in Bisfi at the headquarters of their FPO. Photo: Mirja Vogel.

Hundreds of community groups were started across the six focus regions in Bihar. Today, 18 FPOs like Devi’s are up and running in other districts. 

The majority are turning a profit, and the focus is now on ensuring the groups can continue to flourish sustainably. 

“Today, the (BSLD [Bihar Sustainable Livelihood Development] is Heifer’s flagship rural transformation model in India – scaling market access, strengthening value chains, and fueling women-led enterprises that are reshaping Bihar’s rural economy from the ground up,” said Choudhary. 

Choudhary said the program has benefitted over 70,000 families in Bihar.

At a time where their lives and wellbeing are being directly threatened by climate change, women across Bihar have united at a time when they were most isolated and in danger. Together, they are now determined not only to survive, but thrive. 

Featured image: Mirja Vogel.

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About the author: Gordon Cole-Schmidt is a journalist specializing in human rights and world affairs. He’s reported across the world for most major international publications.