ISLAMABAD: Shareefan Mai from Chak Mohsin Khan in the Muzaffargarh district is expecting 1,600 kilogrammes per acre wheat yield this year compared to 1,000 kg in 2013.

“I am so happy that my family has finally recognised me as a farmer because my wheat field is looking bigger than that of anyone else. In the past, only men in the family were considered as farmers,” she said.

This change in Shareefan Mai’s life was made possible through the new techniques of wheat farming and seed preservation that she learnt during a women farmer training programme run with the support of USAID.

Shareefan is one of the 500 women who were taught about the new ways of agriculture in women farmer schools set up since October 2012 in eight areas in Muzaffargarh. The two-year programme comes to an end in July 2014.

“The programme has changed our lives. We have been taught how to improve what we do, save money and raise income,” said Shazia Akbar, of Inayatpur village in the Union Council Jaggatpur of Muzaffargarh.

“I can now detect a disease in my strawberry plants and take timely action to save it. My income has doubled since I started using the techniques,” she said.

This programme is becoming a model in agricultural education because of its training sessions in water conservation, tunnel farming, soil testing methods besides empowering women with basic literacy, financial literacy and citizenship rights.

Sameena Nazir, who supervised the training camps, said: “Realising that women have less than 20 per cent literacy in this region, we adopted a holistic approach to empower this group of 500 women farmers with economic and legal rights simultaneously.”

She said women beneficiaries of the project now know how to get a CNIC and how to set up a tunnel for off-season vegetable farming. In the last quarter of the project, women are currently learning how to open a bank account and get loans,” she said.

“The project started at Muzaffargarh after five years of training of women farmers in the district of Chakwal. Many of the women trainers came from Chakwal to train others in Muzaffargarh. The presence of women agriculture trainers made a huge difference.”

She added: “We need to take this project to the next level and teach the women how to package and market the strawberry fruit better,” said Ms Nazir.