President Droupadi Murmu launched the Global Conference on Women in Agri-Food Systems (GCWAS–2026) today, March 12, 2026, at the NASC Complex in New Delhi in an historic development in the world agricultural scene. The United Nations-proclaimed International Year of Women Farmers is the three-day event under the theme of Driving Progress, Attaining New Heights.
Speaking to an audience of more than 700 delegates, including farmers at the grassroot level, and Nobel laureates, President Murmu gave a heartfelt appeal to understand that the history of agriculture is and always has been the history of women.
The President noted that women are the behind-the-scenes players of our food security. They plant, and they raise and they reap. However, far too long they have been at the bottom of the pyramid. Now, we are coming out of crediting their work to guaranteeing their leadership.
An International Forward-looking Assembly to the “International Year to Women Farmers. The event, which is a joint venture of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Trust for Advancement of Agricultural sciences (TAAS), and other international entities such as CGIAR, reaches a desperate crossroad. Although women constitute close to fifty percent of the entire agricultural workforce worldwide, the women are often not the ones who own land they plough and are not included in the decision-making process at the top-level.
The GCWAS-2026 is meant to end these structural barriers. As the Guest of Honour with the President, Union Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Shivraj Singh Chouhan insisted that the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India) of India could never materialize without Viksit Naari (Developed Women).
The event includes a prestigious list of voices around the world, such as Dr. Soumya Swaminathan (Chairperson, MSSRF) and Dr. Agnes Kalibata (Connect4Impact) who will speak about the ability to make climate-smart technologies more specific to the physical hardships that women may experience in the fields.
Humanizing the Harvest: Tales of the Soil
The conference is not only a space where the policy is discussed; it is a venue where the Global Trailblazers, who have challenged the norms and created the agricultural empires, are present.
Laxmi Devi, a small farmer in Odisha, is one such attendee, but she changed her small village into organic millet farming. Her existence at the top indicates the transition to subsistence and entrepreneurship.
This is a human-oriented treatment interwoven with technical sessions of the conference, which are aimed at:
- Digital Inclusion: Educating women on using AI and IoT devices to conduct precision farming.
- Financial Empowerment: Getting around the banking and credit systems, which have historically marginalized women.
- Policy Mainstreaming: No longer women-only: to make all agricultural policies gender-responsive.
Read more: President Droupadi Murmu to Launch Delhi Lakhpati Bitiya Yojana
Technical Innovation and 2030 Road Map
The conference is a laboratory of Gender-Transformative Change as the world is racing towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This has been done by creating a special women farmers forum to unravel the grassroots challenges that are usually forgotten in the high ranking reports.
Also read: President Droupadi Murmu to inaugurate grand tribal cultural
The Way Forward: Rhetoric to Results
With the conference heading to its valedictory session which will be delivered by the Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Annapurna Devi, the objective is obvious: to come up with a set of actionable recommendations that will influence the global policy over the next decade.
The first address delivered by President Murmu was very elevated in terms of these deliberations. She encouraged leaders of the world and scientists to not only help women, but step aside and allow them to lead. The 2026 summit is the time when the world will finally cease to consider women farmers as beneficiaries and will begin to see them as the key actors that move the agri-food system in the world.
The proposed women in agriculture summit, which is set to conclude at the end of this three-day summit, is believed to offer a map clear cut on how to have gender parity in the sector by 2030.
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