Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0002-8498-2576

Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Anthropology

Second Department

History

Reader 1

Seo Young Park

Reader 2

Andrew Aisenberg

Reader 3

Piya Chatterjee

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Sara F Mehkri

Abstract

“Beejagalu Namma Jeevana” (Seeds are Our Life): Women Farmers’ Relational Practices of Care, Labor, and Life within Regenerative Systems in South India, examines the role of women farmers in regenerative agricultural systems in Kanakapura, Karnataka, through ethnographic fieldwork with GREEN Foundation (GF) and its farmer networks. It argues that regenerative agriculture in this context is produced through care-based multispecies assemblages that reconfigure relationships between labor, knowledge, and ecological life, generating resilient socio-agroecological systems and expanding forms of human capability.

Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews with women farmers, participant observation, and historical analysis of agrarian change in South India, this thesis traces how extractive British colonial policies and the Green Revolution transformed local food systems, displaced traditional agricultural knowledge and increased dependence on external inputs. In response, regenerative initiatives emerged as community-led efforts to restore ecological balance, seed sovereignty, and relational modes of farming.

Specifically, it demonstrates how women are central to this process: their embodied, often invisiblized labor - through seed saving, soil care, cultivation, and social coordination - and sensorial ways of knowing are foundational to the production and maintenance of these systems. Ultimately, the highlights how regenerative agriculture is a deeply social and affective process shaped by care, with women farmers acting as key agents of ecological and social transformation.

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