Women shape agriculture
Perspectives from India, Kenya … and Bonn
It sounds too good to be true: smallholder farmers are overcoming poverty, hunger and malnutrition, freeing themselves from the debt trap together and defying climate change with their innovations from below. A new generation of innovative smallholder farmers is changing agriculture in Asia and Africa. Over a million farmers in Andhra Pradesh have switched to community managed natural farming in the last ten years. APCNF and its nine principles are now spreading to other regions of India and the world. Thousands of smallholder farmers in Kenya are participating in the Seed Savers Network ‘s knowledge exchange and collectively defending their right to develop and exchange their own seeds.
Thursday, February 26, 2026 6:00 p.m.
Bonn Art Museum
Helmut-Kohl-Allee 2, 53113 Bonn
Jyothi Bobbili and Narasamma Arika (smallholder farmer-scientist from Andhra Pradesh) report on the successes on their farms
The success story of Natural Farming and the role of women self-help groups
Sudhakar Yerrakonda and Swati Redunchintala (RySS, APCNF) describe the concept of Natural Farming
Women in agriculture and the Natural Farming innovation concept
Daniel Wanjama, Seed Savers Kenya, describes the joint work of almost 100,000 smallholder farmers in 121 community seed banks
Food and Seed Sovereignty in Kenya
Silvana Mammone Solidarische Landwirtschaft Alfter describes the success of small farmers in solidarity agriculture
Women in CSA – a regional perspective Moderation:
Moderation: Benny Haerlin from the international Global Farmers of the Foundation on Future Farming, who are organizing an APCNF tour through Europe from 10.2. to 5.3.26.
Background
Over the past ten years, more than one million farms in Andhra Pradesh (for comparison: the whole of Germany still has 250,000) have converted to the nine principles of APCNF, which are very similar to organic principles here, but also go beyond them. Natural farming is based on diversity in cultivation, humus formation, targeted stimulation of the soil microbiome without chemicals or genetic engineering and solidarity among the women of the communities involved. They are successful because income and food security increase immediately and people and soil are healthy.
In the 1970s, Andhra Pradesh was the heartland of high-yield rice cultivation using artificial irrigation and chemicals. However, the productivity gains of this ‘green revolution’ have failed to overcome hunger, poverty or the excessive debt of small farmers, and are causing ever greater damage.
Above all, ‘chemical agriculture’, as it is called there, has no solution to the consequences of climate change in that region: extreme heat, droughts, cyclones and floods.
The APCNF farmers, on the other hand, work with scientists from all over the world to develop innovations from the bottom up, which they test and optimize directly in practice. Their toolbox includes new seed mixtures and biological preparations, the use of drones, data and knowledge management with cell phones as well as the introduction of a complete, additional growing season.
The independent innovations of farmers and the free exchange of their own seeds are also at the forefront of the Seed Savers in Kenya: almost 100,000 farmers jointly run 121 local seed banks and share their knowledge via joint apps. On demonstration fields, they show how a family can make ends meet with 2000 m² of land. Diversity in cultivation is also the key to success here.
Learn more about this encouraging and inspiring garden and field revolution first-hand from Seed Savers founder Daniel Wanjama and from Bobbili Jyothi and Narasamma Arika, who each cultivate half a hectare of land and an “Anytime Money” kitchen garden and were trained at the Indo-German Academy for Agroecology. Incidentally, the UN has declared 2026 the Global Year of Women Farmers.
Background information über APCNF and their European Tour
Video von Bobbili Jyothi
More information on Youtube:
More information about APCNF in general.