Female farmers: The field is changing

By Julie Selby & Melinda Stephan

Women have faced discrimination throughout history, but two local female farmers have quite a foothold in the male-dominated world of agriculture.

There are quite a few professions that have classically been dominated by men, including agriculture, but are women finally a force to be reckoned with in the field of farming?

The current research says they are, but it also points out that wage discrepancies based on gender still strongly extend into the agricultural industry. According to CBS MoneyWatch, “women who are farmers and ranchers face the biggest pay gap out of all the professions measured by the Census, at 60.7 cents for every $1 their male counterparts earn.”  One cause could be gender discrimination.

Gwenn Volkert, operator of Ferrum Morraine Farm in Kent, says although she has faced discrimination as a female farmer, the worst discrimination she’s faced is in her other career.

“I get discriminated against all the time as a professor, being female in computer science. All the students are male,” Volkert said. “In my classes, out of 40 students, if there’s two girls, that’s a lot.”

Volkert also deals with prejudice as a woman farmer. She believes the inequities she’s faced are mostly due to preconceived notions people have about farmers.

“It’s nothing terribly overt, but subtle things that I think people don’t even realize that they do. Such as when you ask someone a question and it’s farm-related, they’ll often look around for my husband and I assure them that I’m the one that needs the information. So it’s just kind of subtle; they just kind of make an assumption.”

In fact, the first time Volkert went to talk to officials at a farm agency, she said it was pretty clear that they didn’t consider her to be a real farmer, and it was obvious to her that they were “more accustomed to interacting with men.”

Abbe Turner, cheesemaker at Lucky Penny Creamery, said she faced the same kind of narrow-mindedness when she bought a farm and started her creamery.

“I would say my most challenging moment as a small business owner – not even just a woman farmer – was when I went to meet with an economic development agency to borrow funds to purchase a piece of equipment, and I was reminded that I had three children under 12 at home in the household, and I don’t think that’s something they would have said to a male,” Turner said.

Turner believes that “often discrimination happens because people just don’t understand.” Similar to Volkert’s experiences, Turner noted that she is used to first meetings with people in which they expect there to be a man with her: “…but it’s my business, so I’m going to carry that note. So it’s not a traditional approach in agriculture.”

And agriculture is changing. The USDA reports that the number of farms consisting of 500 acres or more is increasing and the number of smaller farms has been decreasing for quite some time.

Volkert sees this trend, especially among her gender. “We’re talking about a smaller farm. Most of the women farmers that I know, we’re running farms that are less than 40 acres,” Volkert said. “We don’t have extremely large crop fields. So it tends to be a little bit of a disconnect between the services like the farm extension office and these new farmers who tend to be female.”

Turner believes that even though there may not be as many small, family farms as there used to be, it won’t stop women from continuing to populate the field of agriculture.

“These days, there’s many, many women in agriculture and the number of small farms that actually is growing in the United States is by women owners,” Turner said. “The average farmer in the United States is a 55-year-old white male. And the face of agriculture is changing.”

This is not to say that breaking into the field is always profitable as a man or a woman. According to the USDA, a farm is as anyone selling more than $1,000 a year in agricultural products, and most make less than $250,000 per year.

Hardships aside, more women are putting cracks in the glass ceiling of the farming world. According to Cincinnati.com, “between the 2002 and 2007 agricultural censuses, the number of females who are the principal owners of a farm shot up 30 percent. Now more than 1 million women fully or partly own farms, making them 14 percent of all American farmers and putting hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland under their control.”

Turner and Volkert agree that discrimination should not prevent women from becoming farmers. Though Turner knows “farming tends to be a little bit of a good ‘ol boys network,” and that she’s usually “met with curiosity at best and maybe spite at worst,” she would still encourage interested women to follow their career path right into the world of agriculture.

“It is really important for people to understand that the field is changing and that there are going to be more and more women,” Volkert said. “We’re the fastest rising group of farmers that there is. So I think every time that I do encounter [discrimination], it’s a good teaching experience for the person I’m interacting with.”

And Volkert is right. A study released by USDA’s Economic Research Service “found that the number of women-operated farms more than doubled between 1982 and 2007. When all women involved with farming are added up – including primary and secondary operators – they are nearly one million strong and account for 30% of U.S. farmers.”

However the same study also notes that “women farmers and ranchers still have a ways to go. More women than men rely on off-farm income, suggesting that farming cannot support them full-time. Only 5% of women-operated farms have sales of $100,000 or more.”

Volkert and Turner would like to see women gain even more ground in the farming community. Volkert admits she may sound like she’s reinforcing a stereotype, she believes women are nurturers, and by nature are capable of providing for their families and other families in their community.

And Turner agrees: “As women we are first producers of food, and there’s really nothing more intimate that we can do which is produce food for our families. So I’d like to see a day where men and women are respected for their differences, and in their approaches to food production and approaches to farming, and where we can take advantages of both of our strengths.”

The research seems to concur with Turner. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that “female farmers are just as efficient as male farmers but they produce less because they control less land, use fewer inputs and have less access to important services such as extension advice. When women control additional income, they spend more of it than men do on food, health, clothing and education for their children. This has positive implications for immediate well-being, long-run human capital formation and economic growth through improved health, nutrition and education outcomes.”

Turner knows women will have to continue to work hard and overcome bias in order to make their communities and businesses thrive, but she is optimistic: “I think that the scales aren’t tipped so favorably for women yet, in agriculture or in small business, but certainly that day is changing, and we will be a force to be reckoned with.”