Abstract This paper studies the relationship between the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and market orientation of farm production in India. This is the first time that the WEAI has been used in an Indian agricultural context and the first time that it is...

Abstract In this paper, we establish a statistically important relationship between household agricultural income and women’s BMI using a five-year panel dataset of rural households drawn from 18 villages across five Indian states. Using within household variation over time, we estimate both the extent to...

Abstract Soil health (SH) of managed lands in India is affected by anthropogenic activities such as nutrient mining, excessive tillage, and monocropping, which reduce the productive capacity of soils. A comprehensive SH characterization was conducted in 27 catchments in six districts of Jharkhand, India. Each...

Abstract Livelihood diversification through greater non-farm activities has been considered as an important mechanism to propel growth, lower rural poverty and augment farm income across developing countries. Little, however, is known about its implications for nutritional outcomes such as dietary diversity. Using a nationally representative...

Abstract The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a direct, multi-dimensional measure of women’s access to resources and decision-making in various domains of agriculture. However, several challenges characterize its use: adaptation of questionnaires to local agricultural contexts, modifications to index construction once underlying activities and adequacy thresholds are...

Abstract In this paper we study the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and their iron deficiency status in Maharashtra, India. This is the first time the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has been used in association with explicit measurement of medical biomarkers for...

Abstract Over half of all women of reproductive age are affected by anaemia in India. In this paper we study the role that both household market integration and women’s empowerment in agriculture can play in determining women’s dietary diversity. Our analysis is based on primary...

Abstract Background: Recent literature, largely from Africa, shows mixed effects of own-production on diet diversity. However, the role of own-production, relative to markets, in influencing food consumption becomes more pronounced as market integration increases. Objective: This paper investigates the relative importance of two factors –...

Abstract Recent large-scale pandemics such as the covid19, H1N1, Swine flu, Ebola and the Nipah virus, which impacted human health and livelihoods, have come about due to inadequate food systems safeguards to detect, trace and eliminate threats arising from zoonotic diseases. Such diseases are transmitted...

Abstract Background: It is widely considered that women have less diverse diets than other household members. However, it has been challenging to establish this empirically since women’s diet diversity is measured differently from that of other household members. Objective: In this article, we compare women’s...