 India is now the world's largest dairy producer, with almost all of this milk coming from small scale farmers owning just a few dairy cows, or buffalo. The demand in the country for milk and milk products is booming, opening up big opportunities for small producers to benefit from new milk markets. But wide use of traditional dairy methods, especially poor quality and quantity in feed, can't keep up with the soaring demand. To help small dairy farmers compete, the International Livestock Research Institute, or ILRI, teamed up with the Malookanore Women's Cooperative Dairy in a two-part pilot study investigating the impact of a new fauna variety on milk productivity and how this high-tech forage might also improve gender equity in small-holder dairy farms. ILRI has taken the new fodder variety CoFS-20 and developed by the Regional Institute from Southern India, and they wanted to test whether it increases the milk productivity and also how this new fodder changes the gender ecosystem within the small-holder dairy production system. ILRI's study area is northwest of the Supertec City of Hyderabad, a semi-arid region in central India. 16 villages were involved within the operational zone of the women's dairy cooperative, one of India's most successful and unique dairy institutions. Exclusively, all the membership of this dairy cooperative is given to women. There are 25,000 women members participating in this dairy cooperative. Women predominantly handle the dairy operation, from feeding and milking cows to processing and selling the milk, with men working right alongside. At its start-up almost two decades ago, the cooperative tellingly chose to call its milk brand Shrakrushi, which translates as self-help, and developed marketing slogans claiming quality milk is Shrakrushi milk, which can be understood as self-empowered milk. A key point at the heart of the establishment of one of India's first all-women dairy cooperatives. Over the years, the cooperative conducted many trainings with other institutions, including numerous attempts to promote other green grasses that were often unsuccessful. For Illuri's new semi-arid study area, the promising COFS-29 grass variety, developed by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University of Southern India, was chosen for its high and fast biomass production and high biomass feed quality. Initially, 25 women dairy farmers were given COFS-29 seeds and planting instructions. Calavathy was one of them. During the study, Calavathy went to trainings, planted the seeds, fed her cows, milked them twice a day, and delivered the milk on her motorbike. She learned everything she could about COFS-29. At the cooperative's collection point, her milk is weighed and tested and quickly given a value, a price per liter. There are three test factors that fix this price. Most important is fat content next to SNF and then specific gravity of the milk. All is being recorded automatically from the milk analyzer. Here we can see that the milk quantity was 1.49, 5.6 was the fat, 28.7 was the specific gravity. So the amount which is coming is 50 rupees 9 paisa. That means around 0.8 dollars we will get for this evening milk. Using the new feed, Calavathy and the other dairy farmers were now consistently getting higher prices for their milk. Not only was quantity and quality improving, but dairy animal health as well. It had to be the COFS-29. Calavathy's husband agreed. Due to the increase in the number of cows per day, we get up to 4,000-5,000 cows per month. Because of that, our income has increased. Our women, our children, and even our children have no money. Word of mouth about the effectiveness of the grass quickly spread among the villages. Co-op members liked it because it grew fast, was easy to cut, and the dairy animals ate all of it because it had no sharp leaf edges, leaving no wastage. Shortly after, almost 500 farmers were planting COFS-29, with some even selling excess seeds, making a small business of it. With COFS-29 adopted by the women's dairy members, it was time to ask the second part of Illarie's question. What gender transformations, if any, did this new green grass variety provoke? The answer lies partly in understanding why the Malucanor women's cooperative dairy was set up in the first place, whose very start can be considered something of a gender transformation. So the most important aspect of this dairy cooperative is that the income from the milk sale, it goes straight away to their women and she has all the right to spend the income. Earlier the mixed dairy cooperative, they are dominated by the men in the decision making or controlling the income, but in this cooperative, women is the center. The vendor is a good example of a founding member of the cooperative. She joined 17 years ago. She was a daily laborer at the time, earning little money. After 4 hours, we clean the dairy, add some water to it, add some water to it, and then we dry it. Before the women's dairy started, we had to do the same with the women in the family. Devendra's son, who lives at home, plans to expand her dairy business. He supports the idea of a woman's dairy cooperative, and when he marries, he wants his wife to join too. Once the survey results are in, it was clear that use of this green fodder influence gender norms in three ways, time, knowledge, and money. Usually in the villages, women graze the animal at least three to four hours every day. When Illry introduced this new green fodder, they started planting this near their homestead land that has given women some decreased walk burden. The three to four hours needed for grazing was reduced to twenty to thirty minutes, freeing up time for women to get involved more with family and leadership activities. Calavati, for example, ran her dairy and had time to become chair of the local dairy co-op, something once unheard of for a woman with little free time. Sometimes women can't carry such a huge load of this green grass. As dairy was becoming more lucrative and less labor intensive than crop growing, more men willingly shared the dairy burden with the women to gain more income for the entire household and extra time for themselves as well. This is one of the gender norms changed through green fodder innovation. Knowledge enables. The original 25 women in the pilot study learned all about COFS-29 cultivation and its use. Then they took this information and did something with it. Previously, men always used to think that keys the knowledge power, keys to direct the woman. When a woman is having knowledge on anything like feeding, how to feed the animal, within her household, she gets respected. Men are the traditional knowledgeable farmers. With the adoption of COFS-29, women are now knowledgeable farmers as well. This is a change in gender perceptions and norms, which promises to lead to even more decision making by women in the future. Cooperative members milk their cows and are given a price for the milk, a value for their efforts. Every 15 days their co-op delegates present the village milk bill at the main co-op office and return home to distribute the cash to the dairy farmers. When women is getting more income, men started feeling easy because it has reduced his burden that, oh, I have to earn money. This increased income has posed some good relationship between men and women within the household. The gender norm change here is that before, only men were considered the breadwinners. With this forage innovation, women's dairy contribution to the household income is now becoming more significant. Illyri's pilot study introducing a new fad of a variety to small-scale dairy farmers in India yielded not only greater milk quality and quantity, but also greater gender equity. The innovation further reduced women's labor, giving them more time to spend with family and community. Yet, still more needs to be done. This innovation should be scaled up to reach all members of the cooperative and household gender norms should be further studied, especially as increasing numbers of educated and entrepreneurial young people are becoming more involved with the Malukunur Women's Co-operative Daily. Thank you.