Floriculture †a Booming Sector for Women Entrepreneurs in...

Floriculture – a booming sector for women entrepreneurs in rural India Abstract India is gifted with diverse agro-climatic conditions like good quality soils, suitable climate, abundant water supply, low labour cost, which form effective support system to Floriculture . India has an added advantage that it has good export relations with the countries like Japan ,USA, and other European countries . Commercial floriculture is becoming important from the export angle. The liberalization of industrial and trade policies paved the way for development of export oriented production of cut flowers. As traditional flower cultivation is apart of Indian agriculture it is very near to the rural India .With growing†¦show more content†¦Present status and growing trade is still in infancy. Floriculture in India is being viewed as a high growth Industry. The new seed policy had already made it feasible to import planting material of international varieties. Entrepreneurial Opportunities for Women in floriculture: A very little effort has been done on entrepreneurship development among women farmers. The tendency to be an entrepreneur empowers women and enables them to gain from commercial agriculture especially floriculture. There is a tremendous opportunity in floriculture trade at entrepreneurial level for women. Besides growing and selling cut flowers, women can, set up small enterprises where value-addition can be made like exports .Trade in dried flowers is also on the rise. The women can easily tap this opportunity. Enabling women farmers to enable women take advantages of the developments in floriculture, it is important to change the system at various levels. They are basically at three levels: †¢ Policy level (like provision of higher subsidy to women-owned farms). †¢ Field extension level to encourage women farmers take up greenhouse. †¢ Women farmers’ level where more of women extension workers need to be engaged to transfer the information and knowledge to women farmers. There is also a need to organize knowledge and skill training for women, either exclusively for them at the village level or along with their male family members at the Model Floriculture Centre (MFC) level, on