International Women’s Day was celebrated virtually by ICAR –CIWA on 8th March 2021 under the theme “Women Leadership in Agriculture: Entrepreneurship, Equity and Empowerment”. Dr Tanuja.S, Scientist & Nodal Officer, International Women’s Day gave the welcome address. Dr. S.K.Srivastava, Director ICAR-CIWA, in his address highlighted different roles played by women in everybody’s life. He cited “Agriculture as the culture which unites our nation”. He emphasised that it is important to improve the decision making ability of farm women through doubling their income inorder to make the nation self reliant. He highlighted about the release of a publication compiled and published by ICAR-CIWA entitled “Women Leadership in Agriculture: Entrepreneurship, Equity and Empowerment” by the Honourable Ministers of States for Agriculture and farmers Welfare, Shri Kailash Choudhary and Shri Parshottam Rupala during the International Women’s Day celebration of ICAR on 8th March 2021 and lauded the efforts of all ICAR-CIWA staff in the release of the publication.

Mrs. Padmja Bhanu, Founder and MD of Terragreens Organic, Hyderabad was one of the invited speakers in the programme. In her speech, she called the farm women, "Unsung heroes of agriculture sector". She said only 13% women have land holding on their own name. She lauded the better position of Odisha in women empowerment owing to its culture and tradition. She detailed about her organisation “Terragreens organic” which strives to revive sustainable agriculture production in India though organic farming. She emphasised that their team is led and consists of many women and she provides equal opportunity to her women employees too. She concluded her speech by quoting that “ We need farmers three times in a day to get food in our plate, but we need a woman in every second of our life”.

Another progreesive farmer Smt Kavita Umashankar Mishra from Karnataka also shared her experiences from being an Infosys employee to a Sandalwood farmer and fruit cultivator. She suggested to farm women that it is always better to go for integrated farming involving agriculture, horticulture, agroforestry, animal husbandry, and floriculture to reduce the cost of cultivation. She reiterated that it is unwise to make huge investments which will invite risks, but it is always wise to rely on the resources which we have and to slowly build on what we have. Nature will never fail us. She urged the farmers to take motivation from failures as after a thousand falls we may have one rise.

Ms Pinaki Parimita, a successful women entrepreneur from Astaranga, Puri, Odisha shared her journey to be an entrepreneur in value added fish products under the guidance and technical backstopping from ICAR-CIWA. She was felicitated by Director ICAR-CIWA. The programme ended with vote of thanks by Shri Neetish Kumar, Co-Nodal Officer, International Women’s Day.