India's women-run self-help program studied to be key to ensuring food security during lockdowns

NEW DELHI: A government-backed women's self-help group program in the state of Odisha, India, was key to ensuring food security during the March COVID-19 lockdown, new research has found.

The research from the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Italy, showed that these self-help groups (SHG), called "Veg on Wheels", were crucial to mitigating fractures in the fresh fruit and vegetable value chains during the lockdown.

These groups are known to be women-only rotating savings and credit associations with a long history in India.

The researchers said that the SHG system provided a 'third force' and model for rethinking and re-engineering current development models by leveraging existing institutions and grassroots networks to build resilience in food systems.

In March 2020, India's government announced a strict lockdown with just four hours of notice. The lockdown included a ban on the informal and traditional food outlets that 80 to 90 per cent of Indians relied on for their main source of food, thereby threatening their food security.

The women in these SHG groups procured fresh fruit and vegetables from farmers, hired transport, purchased more vegetables from wholesalers, and sold the food to people in local and urban markets via truck, cart, or motorbike, explained Jonathan Mockshell, an agricultural economist and the first author of the study published in the journal World Development.

"They were meeting every night," said Thea Ritter, an agricultural economist and second author of the study.

"There were women who were vegetable and fruit producers themselves or had close links with others outside the group; this helped because they were familiar with the supply chain," said Ritter.

Ritter added that some groups received government funding for training in areas like accounting, which some members would later use to start their own businesses.

The number of people in or at risk of acute food insecurity surged from 135 million across 53 countries before the Covid-19 pandemic, to 345 million across 79 countries in 2023, the researchers said quoting the World Food Programme Statistics.

The researchers said that two critical dimensions of food security came into play in the program they looked at - agency and sustainability/resilience.

"In terms of the value chain, agency means being able to sell your fruit and vegetables if you want to and having a say in policies and laws," said Ritter.

Ritter added that the team focused on resilience - the ability and capacity to deal with shocks in food systems - rather than the traditional view of sustainability, which is being able to provide for future generations without depleting current resources.

The researchers said that with over a billion members of such rotating credit and saving associations, especially in Africa and South Asia, the SHG model had global applications.

These pre-existing organisations can be harnessed to rebuild fractured supply chains and provide a model for other governments to replicate in times of crisis, such as extreme climate events and conflicts, when both rural and urban supply chains are disrupted, they explained.

The SHG system could also be leveraged to smooth other supply chains in situations where private and public sector presence are limited, such as in the distribution of medical supplies, explained Mockshell.