In a new article, Dawn Cheong and Bettina Bock argue that farmers’ capabilities, a core component of social sustainability, have been largely neglected in sustainable agriculture discourse. Using a relational approach to capabilities and autonomy, this study explores how women farmers translate the opportunity of agricultural innovation into their valued outcomes, and which factors shape their capabilities, in the context of Terai, Nepal, based on micro-focus group discussions (FGDs) and a survey. Whilst women have experienced a rapid expansion of their capacities and status as producers, their fixed status as providers of social reproduction hinders this expansion from being fully translated into valued outcomes. Gendered and intersectional personal, social and environmental conversion factors independently and co-constitutively shape these capability spaces. In this process, women navigate the demands of sustaining productive roles whilst maintaining the quality of social reproduction, often compromising their bodily, mental and intellectual replenishment and enduring cumulative reproductive health risks across their life courses. This implies that even when provided with the same opportunities, not all women farmers are able to translate them into desired outcomes. The lack of social and institutional interventions to redistribute and reorganise reproductive labour not only functions as a structural barrier preventing women from fully leveraging their productive capabilities but also risks compounding the depletion of women’s labour sustainability, overall well-being, and ultimately, the sustainability of agrarian society.

Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sd.70817