In a unique venture, women farmers in Medak district, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, have made 12 films that document their experience of regaining autonomy over food production, seeds, natural resources and markets

Poor farmer women from 80 districts in Medak district in Andhra Pradesh have found a unique way to empower themselves. They have made a series of 12 films on subjects around sustaining local food systems and agricultural biodiversity. The films trace the experience of women regaining their autonomy over food production, seeds, natural resources and markets.

The series, ‘Affirming Life and Diversity: Rural Images and Voices on Food Sovereignty', was launched in New Delhi on June 9, 2008, under the banner of the Community Media Trust, a collective of women farmers in Andhra Pradesh.

Mostly illiterate and from the dalit caste, the women came together to form grassroots sanghams engaged in a variety of activities that include returning to traditional farming systems and crops. They have also launched an alternative public distribution system (PDS) that is fair and just. Masanagiri Narasamma says that the community-led PDS taught them to revive locally grown crops such as sorghum and millet and create local systems of storage.

Sooramma explains that she is a seed-keeper. “I store a variety of valuable seeds in baskets in my house… I am storing the knowledge of my community on film and interpreting it for the world.”

The women's activities have gone some way in lessening the traditional discrimination they face. Narasamma, a dalit, says they were not allowed to enter temples and rich homes earlier, but now “even the rich allow us to touch them to pin the lapel mike for a video-shoot”.

The women were given six months training in multi-media. The films emerged from a project on sustaining local food systems, agricultural biodiversity and livelihoods supported by the International Institute for Environment and Development, UK .

The Community Media Trust is affiliated to the Deccan Development Society and was created to document the struggle, voices and images of rural women.

Source: The Hindu , June 11, 2008