Indigenous Farming and Women's Health : A Critical Discussion Across Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Women-led indigenous farming and ethnobotanical systems across Asia, Africa, and South America are vital yet often overlooked foundations for reproductive health, food security, and ecological resilience. This paper draws on diverse case studies—including jamu in Indonesia, ayurveda in India and helawedakama in Sri Lanka, milpa systems in Mexico, Andean potato terraces, and sub-Saharan African agroforestry—to illustrate how women cultivate biodiversity-rich agricultural and medicinal traditions that support menstruation, fertility, childbirth, and postpartum care.As farmers, healers, seed custodians, and knowledge holders, women advance nutritional, therapeutic, and psychosocial outcomes while preserving intergenerational resilience. Yet these systems face mounting threats from land dispossession, extractive industries, commercial seed regimes, and exclusionary policies. Regional examples—from Kenya’s seed banks and Brazil’s feminist agroecology to Venezuela’s survival-based herbal practices—demonstrate both the strength of these traditions and the gendered barriers to their sustainability.Climate change further underscores the urgency of safeguarding these low-input, locally adapted practices. As women increasingly navigate civil society and state frameworks, their knowledge must be formally recognized and resourced. We argue that inclusive health, agricultural, and environmental policies that centre gender equity, biocultural heritage, and climate resilience in low- and middle-income countries. International collaboration is essential to protecting and scaling women-led indigenous systems as pathways toward transformative global health and sustainability.