Women’s Collectives, SHGs and FPOs as Drivers of Agricultural Transformation

This chapter investigates the role of women’s collectives, Self-Help Groups, producer groups, cooperatives and Farmer Producer Organisations in agricultural transformation. It argues that individual women farmers often operate under constraints such as fragmented land access, weak bargaining power, limited mobility, inadequate finance, low market participation and heavy unpaid workloads. Collective action can help overcome these limitations by pooling savings, improving access to credit, purchasing inputs collectively, sharing machinery, strengthening extension access, developing enterprises and increasing market power. The chapter explains the evolution of women’s collectives from savings and credit groups toward agriculture-based producer organisations engaged in seed production, processing, aggregation, custom hiring, value addition, livestock enterprises and collective marketing. It also discusses the importance of governance, leadership, business planning, transparency, institutional linkages and financial sustainability. The chapter cautions that collectives do not automatically empower women; they may reproduce elite capture, external dependency, token leadership and low-value participation. Effective women’s collectives require real decision-making authority, asset ownership, market engagement and accountability. The chapter concludes that SHGs and FPOs can become strong platforms for women’s empowerment when they move beyond microcredit and create genuine economic, institutional and political agency.