Women have proven to be a powerful force in the fight against global hunger and poverty, especially in agriculture. Worldwide roughly 1.6 billion women rely on farming for their livelihoods, and female farmers produce more than half of the world’s food. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, women account for 75 percent of all the agricultural producers. Today we observe International Women’s Day, a global celebration and recognition of women’s achievements. 

Women farmers face a variety of obstacles, including a lack of access to information technology, agricultural training, financial services, and support networks like co-operatives or trade unions. Without these services, women cannot develop resilience to political, economic, social, or environmental upheaval, and they remain dependent on their male family members.

The good news is that women worldwide are developing and utilizing agricultural innovations to sustainably nourish their families and communities. Today we celebrate 12 innovations that are helping women get access to credit, improve their incomes, feed their families, introduce sustainable crops to markets, and reduce rural poverty:

• Co-ops. Co-operatives, or co-ops, are a type of business characterized by democratic ownership and governance. In the war-torn country of Côte d’Ivoire, Marium Gnire partnered with Slow Foods International to organize a women’s farming cooperative that would provide quality local food for school meals in her village of N’Ganon, increasing both the women’s income and the health of the community.

• Creating Links Between Women Producers and Markets. In Africa’s Western Sahel, the production of shea butter is boosting women’s entry into global markets. Women-run cooperatives across the region are tapping into the global demand for fair trade and organic beauty products by selling the skin-care cream they produce from the shea nut crop to cosmetics firms such as Origins and L’Oréal. These companies in turn pay a fair price for the products and invest in the women’s communities.

• Educating Girls on Family Planning. The United Nations Foundation sponsors Girl Up, an organization that encourages a world where young girls can avoid the pitfalls of too-early marriage and childbearing and can instead go to school, enjoy health and safety, and grow into the next generation of leaders. In the Amhara region of Ethiopia, where half of adolescent girls are married, Girl Up is helping to promote education for young girls. The project offers basic literacy classes, family-planning information, and agricultural training. In delaying motherhood, even for a few years, girls can gain critical years of education, where they often gain knowledge about successful agricultural practices.

• Empowering Young Girls Through Agriculture. When young girls learn valuable agricultural skills, they gain the power to avoid dependence on men for food and financial security. In Rwanda, the Farmers of the Future Initiative helps to empower young girls and other students by integrating school gardens and agricultural training into primary school curriculums. Over 60 percent of students in Rwanda will return to rural areas to farm for a living after graduating instead of going on to secondary school or university. As young girls learn these skills, they become self-sufficient and empowered.

• Extension Services. Extension services are an important way of disseminating agricultural knowledge to farmers, but unfortunately, women have been excluded from many extension programs, whether as service providers or recipients. When women are included in extension programs, they receive an education, raise their agricultural yields, increase their incomes, raise the nutritional status of their household, and contribute to the improvement of their communities. To improve female inclusion in extension programs, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture’s Sustainable Tree Crops Program created videos that women could watch in their homes or in groups, without disrupting their childcare or fuel-gathering obligations. Since 2006, nearly 1,600 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have received cocoa-production training directly through Video Viewing Clubs.

• Female Trade Unions. In developing countries, women are commonly disenfranchised and not offered the same opportunities and rights as men, such as access to credit and land ownership. The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a female trade union in India that began in 1992, works with poor, self-employed women by helping them achieve full employment and self reliance. SEWA is a network of cooperatives, self-help groups, and programs that empower women. Small-scale women farmers in India have particularly benefited from this network that links farmers to inputs and markets.

• Increasing Access to Water. In sub-Saharan Africa, improved access to water means the difference between barely scraping by and eating balanced meals, affording education, and owning a home. In Zambia, Veronica Sianchenga, a farmer living in Kabuyu Village, saw improvements in her family’s quality of life when she began irrigating her farm with the “Mosi-o-Tunya” (Pump that Thunders), a pressure pump that she purchased from International Development Enterprises. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the task of gathering water can take up to eight hours of labor per day and usually falls to women. Because of the pump, her children are eating healthier and she is enjoying increased independence.

• Microfinance Credit. Globally, women fall well short of receiving the same financial benefits and opportunities as men. Only 10 percent of the credit services available in sub-Saharan Africa, including small “microfinance” loans, are extended to women. The New York-based nonprofit Women’s World Banking is the only microfinance network focused explicitly on women, providing loans of as little as US$100 to help women start businesses. Microfinance institutions from 27 countries provide the loans to women who in many cases have no other way to access credit.

• Vertical Farming. Over 800 million people globally depend on food grown in cities for their main food source. Considering that women in Africa own only 1 percent of the land, a practice called vertical farming gives these women the opportunity to raise vegetables without having to own land. Female farmers in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, have been practicing vertical farming using seeds provided by the French NGOSolidarites. This innovative technique involves growing crops in dirt sacks, allowing women farmers to grow vegetables in otherwise unproductive urban spaces. More than 1,000 women are growing food in this way, effectively allowing them to be self-sufficient in food production and to increase their household income. Following the launch of this initiative, each household has increased its weekly income by 380 shillings (equivalent to US$4.33).

• Urban Farming. In Kenya, about 20 urban farmers grow fruits and vegetables on a small strip of land in Kibera, an urban slum in Nairobi with nearly 1 million people. These farmers do not formally own this land and farm through an informal arrangement. More than once, they have been forced to stop farming, and they often see their water supply cut. However, the farmers are continuing to come up with innovative ways of raising food-and incomes-on the farm. With the help of the farmers’ advocacy group Urban Harvest, the farmers are not only growing food to eat and sell, but, perhaps surprisingly, becoming a source of seed for rural farmers.

• Women’s Collectives. In many countries, women’s subordinate position in society makes them easy targets for domestic and sexual violence when working in the agricultural sector, which greatly inhibits their ability to work to their full potential. In India, the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective focuses on advocating for women’s rights and improving food and water security. The collective reaches over 1,500 villages spread across 18 districts in India’s Tamil Nadu state and has helped many women see an increase in crop yields. The collective provides counseling and support for female victims of domestic violence, promotes women’s participation in local government, and helps women strengthen local food systems, through education on natural farming techniques.

• Women-Run Community Seed Banks. Studies have shown that women farmers typically have lower crop yields than their male counterparts. Rural women farmers’ lower productivity compared to male farmers may be due to women lacking access to high-quality seeds and agricultural inputs. The GREEN Foundation has partnered with NGOs including Seed Savers Network and The Development Fund to create community seed banks in India’s Karnataka state. Women run these seed banks, gaining leadership skills and acquiring quality organic seeds that yield profitable crops and their food security and incomes.

Although these innovations inevitably help men as well as women, it is important that policymakers, scientists, farmers’ groups, and the funding and donor communities focus on ensuring that these women harness the power of these innovations so we can create a more equitable and nourished planet.

Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet project recently traveled to 25 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, unearthing innovations in agriculture that can help alleviate hunger and poverty while also protecting the environment. These innovations are elaborated in the recently released report State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.

Photo: Bernard Pollack

But bullying your critics and worried consumers is not always the best public relations strategy. Sometimes you need to cultivate the softer sell.

That must be why commodity growers’ lobbies have launched fresh campaigns aimed at polishing their tarnished reputation. How? By showcasing female farmers as the fresh, new faces in their public relations toolbox. The latest campaign by the National Corn Growers Association and the United Soybean Board is titled Common Ground.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Common Ground “will attempt to put a more feminine, friendly and empathetic face on large-scale agriculture by using women farmers to appeal to suburban and urban grocery shoppers–most of whom are women themselves.” As the paper reported:

“We’re a unique voice because we’re also moms. We’re the ones getting the food on the table,” said Chris Wilson, president of American Agri-Women and lifelong farmer, who is originally from Illinois. “We make a good connection with consumers.”

But as usual, even the most cursory analysis of Big Ag’s PR claims shows that they obscure a very different reality. Environmental Working Group (EWG) took a look at the board membership of five of the largest organizations representing corn, soybean, wheat, cotton and rice growers. They also happen to be the five crops that together collect 90 percent of federal farm subsidies.

What we found is that female representation on these boards amounts to a staggeringly meager 1.3 percent. By comparison, women on the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s (NSAC) Organizational Council actually outnumber men (55 percent).

The new $30 million public relations campaign by Big Ag groups would just as soon keep these numbers out of sight. We believe they deserve center-stage attention.

2010/2011 Board Membership at Five National Commodity Organizations

And since we’re keeping score, the leaders of all three national organic food and agriculture organizations are women: The Organic Center is lead by Joan Boykin, the Organic Trade Association is helmed by Christine Bushway and Maureen Wilmot runs the show at the Organic Farming Research Foundation.

Looking deeper into the gender statistics around farming, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that women now operate 14 percent of the nation’s 2.2 million farms. More important, though, is how these women farm the land and conserve natural resources. The Organic Farming Research Foundation reports that 22 percent of organic farmers are women. They, and their fellow male organic farmers, follow practices that  conserve soil and biological diversity by rotating crops and avoiding synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, hormones and genetically-modified seed.

The Foundation also notes that “women… are far more likely to allocate land to vegetables and herbs (male = 33 percent, female = 47 percent of acreage). They are likewise far less likely than men to devote land to field crops (male = 44 percent, female = 28 percent of acreage).” Women are also more likely to manage smaller farms. The average farm held by women is only 40 acres, while the average spread farmed by men is more than three times as large–149 acres.

It’s not surprising that in the 1960s one of the leading voices against traditional farming practices was Rachel Carson. She spoke out against the long-term effects of misusing pesticides and in 1962 published the groundbreaking “Silent Spring.” Before losing a battle with breast cancer, she called for new policies to protect human health and the environment.

EWG echoes her call today and urges farmers and non-farmers alike to question how our food is grown, not who is showcased in a public relations campaign. In this cause, we are delighted to be in the company of women like Leigh Adcock of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN) in Iowa, as well as Temra Costa, author of Farmer Jane:  Women Changing the Way We Eat. Both are in the vanguard of the movement to build “a more healthful, sane, and sustainable food system for present and future generations.”

“It’s clear to those of us who have been working in the movement for many years that women have always been the primary drivers behind the sustainable agriculture and healthy foods movements,” Adcock said in an email to EWG. “WFAN will be working even harder this year to make sure that the voices of these women are heard in the media and in positions of leadership at all levels.”

Big Ag can showcase women in its new public relations campaigns, but the reality is that women really have almost no voice on the boards of the national commodity organizations. Women like Adcock and Costa don’t need fancy PR campaigns because their sustainable farming practices speak for themselves.

References:

1. http://www.ncga.com/ncga-corn-board-2011
2. http://www.soygrowers.com/about/board.htm
3. http://www.wheatworld.org/wp-content/uploads/about-2010-2011-NAWG-Committee-Assignments.pdf
4. http://www.cotton.org/about/leadership/index.cfm
5. http://www.usriceproducers.com/aboutus

Originally published by EWG

Temra Costa is a sustainable food and farming advocate and author of Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat. Civil Eats will feature her profiles of some of America’s women farmers and food advocates over the coming weeks.

Molly Rockamann (pictured: Karen, Molly, Vicki, Danielle) will forever be remembered as the apprentice at UC Santa Cruz’s Farm and Garden Program that made “Farm Grease, The Musical,” happen. This 28 year-old farmer grew up playing in the racks of her grandmother’s costume shop and with a family that made variety shows a priority at nearly all functions. So it’s not surprising that Molly continues to weave art, dance, and music into her farm in Ferguson, Missouri.

EarthDance FARMS (Food, Art, Relationships & Music…Sustainably) is a 14-acre gem that started growing food for the farmers market of Ferguson in 2008. It expands a little each year both in number of farmers and in food produced. The apprenticeship style of learning and teaching is something that Molly brought home from her travels. The program has more than doubled in its second year – from twelve to 30 – with support of the Missouri Department of Agriculture. (The state applies for Specialty Crop money from the USDA and redistributes to local organizations.) A unique attribute of the EarthDance apprenticeship program as they are open to any age. This year’s group ranges from fifteen to 65. They also just started their first foray into CSA growing their program by starting with the apprentices. For the 2011 growing season, they’re planning to start with 75 people.

When I traveled to St. Louis as a speaker for the Livable St. Louis Conference, I contacted Molly to see if she had time to tour me around on that particular weekend. Her name had come up repeatedly over the past two years as I researched women for Farmer Jane and she just so happened to be hosting a farm fundraiser that weekend. So we partnered up on the event where I would speak and sell books (with proceeds going to the farm), and she in turn would host me for two night while showing me around Ferguson and her farm project. When you’re moving in the right direction, everything lines up.

EarthDance Farm
Ninety-year old Caroline Mueller still lives on the property that has been in her husband Al’s family all those years farming it as nature had intended, without chemicals. When chemicals came on the market in the 40’s, Al’s father pressured him to adopt the latest farm-based technology. But as soon as he tried them, he had health problems that he attributed to the chemicals and he swore them off of the farm forever. The farm started with 200 acres and has slowly shrunk down to fourteen and has slowly been encroached upon by suburban houses with huge grass lawns, bumping stereos, and people sitting on porches. If you blinked, you would pass by it without even seeing the sign that says: Mueller Organic Farm – Established 1883 – Health begins in the soil. The day Molly and I visited the farm there were apprentices working on weeding and irrigation and I had the chance to meet her farm manager Vicki that works on the farm part-time and as a yoga instructor the rest of the time.

When I asked to interview her, Molly says, “It’s not just me!” She explains that she couldn’t do it without Vicki, her farm manager, and the apprentices that work the rows, weed, plan, and plant. Now that Vicki has come on board, Molly spends more time responding to public inquiries, and grant writing and reporting, but still does the Ferguson farmers market every week (when in season). While we picked a bed, I picked her brain about where she came from, what it’s like to be a 28 year-old farmer, and be living her dream.

TC: So Molly, did you grow up on a farm? Why so much interest in farming?

MR: I grew up in a small neighborhood in West St. Louis County, aka the suburbs. We planted tomatoes in the backyard a few summers, and in high school my parents succumbed to my whim and a family friend brought over his tiller to help me till up a sizable plot for me to grow other veggies (which quickly became an entangled jungle because I knew virtually nothing about gardening). My grandparents had a large backyard vegetable garden and I still remember the monstrous size of their cantaloupes and cauliflower. My interest in farming started with my interest in nutrition and my love for nature. I majored in environmental studies in college but chose a lot of international relations and anthropology courses as electives. After taking a course on “Hunger, Plenty, & Justice” I came to realize that food and farming were at the intersection of everything I was passionate about – social justice, nutrition, environment, education, cultural traditions. I also became a member of a CSA in college and knew that one day I’d work on an organic farm. While I worked in a few gardens and read all I could, it wasn’t until 2005 when I did the UCSC apprenticeship program that I actually immersed myself in farming. I’ve been hooked on soil ever since.

TC: You told me a story of two of your first food heroines, Anna and Frankie Lappé, two outstanding women. What is your opinion about the role of women in changing how our country eats and farms?

MR: I’ve found that women are natural collaborators; the sustainable food and farming movement would not be where it is today without a lot of collaboration. Women are also innate nurturers – we take care of our families and often show our love through food – cooking and preparing meals. We make a lot of the household decisions and have a huge impact on what items move off the shelves at the grocery stores. As decision makers and as food providers we have changed the commerce of food and have told the food industry that we want more organic food on the shelves. The role I would like to see more of us women step into now is working for political change on behalf of good food. We have lots of women in the movement working for nonprofits and running farms that are changing our country’s foodscape – this is excellent – but we still need more women in political offices legislating change. We need more Kathleen Merrigan’s in Washington!

TC: Twenty-five of your thirty apprentices are women. Why do you think this is?

MR: Again, women are natural collaborators. I think the cooperative working situation we’ve set up appeals to a lot of women. Men might be more inclined to just go and start their own farms, learning on their own as they go. Of course I’m making gross generalizations though! The five men in our program are certainly collaborators too. It is an interesting trend though… last year 9 of our 12 apprentices were women! Also, the apprentices in our program are in it for a wide variety of reasons – many are wanting to start their own commercial operations, but there are just as many who are wanting to start school gardens, community gardens, and/or become urban homesteaders.

TC: I’m glad we were able to go out dancing one night to see EarthDance in action. After seeing your moves on the dance floor, I have to wonder how you became such a great dancer?!

MR: Ha ha! Thanks. Dancing is my favorite thing to do…although hula hooping is a close second. I took dance classes as a child but stopped when I was about ten to play team sports. If I’d continued I think I would have loved it so much that I may have become a professional dancer. Now, I get to engage in the very fun alternative: being an unprofessional dancer. When I studied in Ghana as a college junior, part of the draw for me was taking West African dance classes. Then when I was living in Fiji in 2004, I joined the Cook Island Dance Troupe since I was living with some ‘Cookies’ and wanted to learn how to shake it like they could. Actually, dance is something I really want to include in our organization’s programs eventually. (You may have noticed it’s in the name of our organization.) Our mantra is celebrating the culture in agriculture. Food, art, and music are three things that help to define a group of people; they’re at the very essence of our human cultures. While traveling I developed a deep appreciation for food, art, and music in other parts of the world, and realized that art and music are as embedded into many agrarian lifestyles as farming itself.

TC: Fun! Almost all of the women in my book have had an international traveling experience that changed their life focus. I can definitely see that traveling impacted you too. So what are your plans now that you’re rooted close to where you grew up?

MR: We want to incorporate dance into our programs, I have dreams of our farm (and other farms) being not only a center of food production but also of art and music production. We’ve started to show our artistic side in small ways, like doing a community mural painting to install on the farm, and hosting a small outdoor concert there. Eventually I’d like to create an artist-in-residence and musician-in-residence program, where in exchange for living on the farm (and eating our veggies) they’d host free workshops for the youth in the neighborhood and contribute a lasting piece of art to the farmscape. I’d also love to re-construct an old barn on the property and use the space to host concerts, workshops, and barn dances! Once we’ve really built a solid foundation for the organization in Ferguson, where we’re currently farming and running an apprenticeship program, I want to help start organic farming training centers/cultural celebration centers in other parts of the world. I’ve worked with farmers in Ghana, Thailand, and Fiji and would love to go back and see if they’d want to partner on such a project.

TC: The farm you’re on has been organic since the late 1800s, which is amazing. How much “land security” do you have on your fourteen (14) acres? What if you had to move?

MR: Virtually none. We have a single year lease and this is really our greatest obstacle right now. The farm we’re growing on has been in production since 1883, and the third generation, Al & Caroline Mueller, do not have any children to pass the farm onto. Caroline, who is 90, still lives on the property today and is a great inspiration to me. When her husband Al passed away in 1999, she started renting out the land by the acre. When my dad took me to visit the farm in high school (when Al was still living) I remember thinking that one day I’d like to work on their farm. When I returned to St. Louis in 2007, I met one of the tenant farmers, John Wilkerson, and after helping him out during my lunch breaks from my office job, I decided I wanted to do whatever I could to keep this particular farm preserved. Thus began EarthDance – where we are growing a community of farmers who are learning the very skills that Al & Caroline spent their entire lives practicing.

My goal with EarthDance is to preserve that agricultural legacy, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to convince Caroline and her family to give us a multi-year lease. They want to be able to sell the farm should someone walk up and give them ‘a suitcase full of money.’ One of the things I love about Caroline is that she never farmed to be trendy. To her it was a hard life and she doesn’t wax poetic about the beauty of farm life. The unfortunate side of this is that she hasn’t been receptive to our plea of preserving the farm. We’re still working on that. Our security has had to grow from our community, since we have no land security. If we had to move hopefully we would be able to find another ideal spot to grow not only food but also more farmers. But I’d sure hate to leave that good soil that Al and Caroline spent their lives building up.

TC: Anything else you’d like to share with folks?

MR: Yes – spend time with your elders. This may sound completely unrelated, but I think they can be our best teachers when it comes to food and farming. What I would give to be able to ask Al Mueller all my farming questions! (I do ask Caroline, but her mind has slipped.) And oh man, if I’d just spent more time in the kitchen with my Grandma Marie learning how to make her pie crust! You want to can, preserve, pickle? You want to know what’s eating your broccoli leaves in the garden? Find an elderly neighbor who would love to tell you all about it. (They’ll probably wonder why you’re asking though; it was so easy and run-of-the-mill back in the day!)

Caroline is still in the house and so on our way out we stop by and check out some of Al’s old crop records that he used to write every night while listening to music. Fuel, seeds, equipment, it’s all there to the penny since the early 1900s. One line makes me laugh out loud as he had jotted down notes about his seasonal pickers, “good picker but eats berries.” We ask Caroline what will happen to the books and she says that she doesn’t care. It’s all going to stay in the house for people to deal with when she’s gone.

Pulling out of the driveway, Molly points out the other side of the sign that announces Mueller Farm. The side that faces into the farm. It reads: Thank you for being a connoisseur of fine foods. Molly marvels that Al thought of that phrase in the early 1900s – a phrase that means that the people who were eating their organically grown food would have to appreciate the flavor, the homegrown taste. We head over to the church for the screening, organic popcorn, Farmer Jane books, live music, and beer. After the movie it was my turn to take the stage. I talked about soil, the amazing activists in it, and all of the great work community members were doing right there in the St. Louis region. After I spoke, a community open mic spontaneously happened. Molly, an intuitive, open-hearted leader, wanted to give some room for others to share what they were doing. She steps away from the mic and resident after resident took the stage to talk about what they are doing for food in the community. One thirteen year-old gets up and beams about the garden that he and his mother just planted. There is hope in youth, and community, and in food and art. And at age 28, Molly Rockaman is demonstrating a level of leadership that excels that of people who are twice her age, by her commitment of living her dream.

A queen of green focuses her first book on female farmers, a subject author Temra Costa comes to organically. Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, grew out of Costa’s career in sustainable food, and her passion for eating locally and seasonally.

While in France finishing up the manuscript for Farmer Jane, she learned how to make goat cheese and picked organic grapes at a vineyard. Back home in the San Francisco Bay Area, she tends a garden ripe with spring produce like lemons, artichokes, and greens, and turns her hand to canning and jamming her excess bounty.

For six years Costa worked with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), supporting the Farm to School initiative and directing the California campaign for Buy Fresh Buy Local.

In the course of her day job, she spent a lot of time with a lot of women engaged in sustainable agricultural, essentially producing food in a way that protects the health of the environment, consumers, and workers. And she thought their stories deserved a forum in what is often seen as a man’s world.

Costa wanted to bring attention to characteristics associated with the second sex, such as community, relationship-building, and the care and feeding of others at work and at home. These frequently feminine traits are central to the emerging green economy, she says, and women have an increasingly important place at the table in discussions about pressing sustainable ag issues, namely people, the planet, and profits.

Women are moving into farming at a greater rate than men, according to the author, who also notes that 60 percent of the nation’s top nonprofits focusing on sustainable ag are run and staffed by women.

But as in other aspects of society, women’s contributions are often undervalued, largely unnoticed, or simply ignored.

Not anymore. Farmer Jane profiles more than two dozen successful females in the sustainable food world. This group includes farmers, chefs, educators, policy wonks, activists, business women, and moms. Some are well known. Others, not so much. All are motivated by their desire to nurture a sustainable food agenda now–and for future generations.

It’s an inspiring bunch. Well-known subjects include urban farm gal Novella Carpenter, chef and cookbook author Deborah Madison, and environmental advocate Anna Blythe Lappe.

But there are also lesser-known folks whose contributions are equally compelling. We learn, for instance, about the work of widowed single mom Mily Trevino-Sauceda, a child of migrant farm workers and the founder of Organizacion De Lideres Campesinas, a support network and social justice organization for mostly Latina female farm hands in California.

And in each profile in this anthology we get a strong sense of the business models, policy plans, or personal missions that have made these women standouts in the sustainable agriculture movement.

Even though a couple of them run businesses as sole proprietors, most have male partners or co-workers. Still, the power of the so-called gentler gender emerges in intriguing ways. Take the case of Emily Oakley of Three Springs Farm in Oklahoma.  When her partner Mike mans their farmers’ market stand alone the farming family brings home less cash than when Emily comes too. This female farmer says it’s her personal connection to customers — and personableness — that makes the difference.

Another farmer describes how rewarding it is to mentor women in the fields. Dru Rivers, who co-owns Full Belly Farm in Northern California, considered a pioneer in the organic food movement, has worked alongside dozens of female farm apprentices, some of whom have gone on to run their own organic farms. You can include Emily Oakley in that group.

Costa, who writes and co-hosts a radio show,  The Queens of Green, with filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia (the filmmaker behind The Future of Food, who is featured in the book), says it’s not surprising that so many women are drawn to sustainable agriculture, with its emphasis on nurturing the land and body.  And, as her book reveals, these women are key players in the “delicious revolution” — even if they’re not as good as guys at getting credit for their efforts.

One major omission: This book is crying out for coffee-table treatment with luscious shots of these women digging in the dirt, selling produce, or cooking food. The author agrees. But, alas, she couldn’t convince her publisher. Pity. You can, however, find wonderful pics of all the women profiled on the Farmer Jane website by clicking here.

And a minor complaint: Not all of the intros to each entry includes a geographic reference. I happen to know that urban farmer Willow Rosenthal resides in my neck-of-the-woods, but not everyone else does.  Likewise, I should have known where Jesse Ziff Cool’s restaurant Flea Street Cafe is, but didn’t. You get a sense from her profile that she’s located somewhere in Northern California, but you have to flip to the back of the book to discover that her cafe is in Stanford. (Easy driving distance from me, I was delighted to discover.)

This is also a can-do kind of guide. At the end of each section Costa includes what she calls a “recipe for action” — a list of concrete advice, whether you’re an eater, farmer, food business, or all of the above. There’s also a handy resource list for readers who want to know more.

The author was inundated with suggestions of female food and farm heroes for this book. In the spirit of building community, she continues to highlight women in the field who make a difference, both on the Farmer Jane website and in stories for the national food policy blog  Civil Eats, where she most recently profiled Nikki Henderson, the new executive director of People’s Grocery in Oakland.

With campaigns like Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, it’s a great time for the people who produce our food to receive the attention they rightly deserve. Farmer Jane ensures that the women leaders of the sustainable ag agenda have their voices heard too.

Do you have a favorite female farmer or sustainable food advocate — perhaps an unsung heroine — who you’d like folks to know about? Let us know below.

Originally published on Lettuce Eat Kale

Enter the female farmer.  She is capable, strong, and determined, working hard to succeed in a male centric career. The US 2007 Census of Agriculture documented that there were 306,209 female farm operators, marking a 30% increase since 2002.  By now, that number has surely grown to significant proportions as we watch (and participate in!) the rising tide of sustainable food systems, young new farmers, and increased concern about where our food comes from.  And, of course, some of these women are mothers, raising children that will grow up with a very different mental definition of farmer than the rest of us.

This Mother’s Day, you have the opportunity to nominate some of those leading ladies in the world of agriculture.  In reaction to Monsanto’s “Farm Mom of the Year” contest, the Women, Food and Agriculture Network based in Ames, Iowa, has come up with a different kind of campaign to emphazise and support women farmers.  To nominate a mom for the “Sustainable Farmer Mom of the Year”, simply send an email to WFAN by May 7th describing the reasons your pick deserves to be honored.  One person will be chosen to be featured in the summer WFAN news profile, but ALL the nominees will highlighted on their website beginning on Mother’s Day.  Send photos too!

The $5,000 prize for Monsanto’s contest does not come without some limitations.  The fine print in the rules and regulations makes it apparent that not all farming moms are eligible.  They must “live on a farm that produces a minimum of 250 acres of corn, soybeans, cotton, vegetables and/or specialty crops (canola, sorghum, wheat or alfalfa); and/or at least 40 acres of fruits and vegetables; and/or raise at least 100 head of cattle or hogs; and/or maintain at least 50 head of dairy cows and/or at least 20,000 poultry (broilers or layers) within the United States.”

What about all our wonderful small farms that are just an acre or two, or all the women that may be leasing land to take a shot at their dream and can’t afford to own yet, much less live on the place they farm?  How about the mother’s who have started gleaning programs or wild foraging females that found a successful niche market? Aren’t these valid examples of farming?

Learning about some of these women, most recently with the addition of Temra Costa’s book Farmer Jane: Women Changing The Way We Eat, is a first step to celebrating their work. Let’s follow Costa’s lead and give the gift of honor this Mother’s Day, recognizing all those who are rewriting that scruffy male cartoon character with a pitchfork.

It feels kind of like the elephant in the room. It’s not that we don’t talk or think about it around here — indeed, we do both, rather frequently. But rarely do we discuss it with others. For some reason, it’s not the kind of subject that is discussed all that openly. Instead, it’s alluded to subtly, in a manner that just confuses me at first, until I remember that this is a little unusual.

“You don’t look like a farmer,” people say when I tell them my profession.

“What do you mean?” I reply, never able to let an issue go,

“Oh, I don’t know,” they reply. “You’re just little. You don’t look like you ride a tractor.”

It still takes me a minute to put it together. (Why do you have to be “big” to ride a tractor? Why do you have to ride a tractor all the time to be a farmer? What does it mean to not “look” like someone who does ride a tractor?) Until I realize, oh, they mean because I am a young woman. At this point, I never know quite what to say. “I ride a tractor sometimes,” or, “Yep, well, I am.” The subject changes. But I am constantly reminded that to be a female farmer is something a little out-of-the-ordinary, to work at a farm site staffed almost entirely by women, even more so. So I decided to express my thoughts about some of the intricacies of women in agriculture.

Lately, I hear a lot about female farmers as a “new trend.” According to the 2007 census, one or two out of ten farms is now operated by a woman. However, the “trend” part is hard to track, and seems to me to obscure some history of women who have always been involved in farming. Female farmers have been historically under-reported and under-recognized. The U.S. census records only one operator per farm, the deed holder. As the majority of land is officially owned by men, this renders invisible all female partners who manage farms with their husbands or families. As I learned from this episode of the radio series Making Contact, worldwide, between 65 and 75 percent of all food is grown by women, who own only one percent of the world’s land. Mainly operating as subsistence growers, this food production is often conceptualized as “domestic work,” obscuring recognition of these female farmers worldwide. Still, the visibility of female farmers, at least within the U.S., is growing. For all its limitations, the census has recorded a more than doubling of farms operated by women between 1978 and 2005, from 100,000 to 250,000.

As the country’s farmers age, a new “back to the land” movement, fueled partly by desires to put personal politics into action and an increasing disillusionment with the job market and traditional concept of careerism for young people, is encouraging a new crop of farmers, many of them women. We new farmers often farm under nontraditional arrangements — co-farmers are often platonic managing partners instead of the heterosexual husband-wife team of the past — meaning women are more often recognized as farm owners or principle managers.

Additionally, as farmers age, their land is more often being taken over by wives, daughters, or other female family members. Interestingly, as making a living as a farmer becomes ever more difficult, it becomes women’s work. At a farmer’s market I frequent, one of the farms is a hundred-acre conventional New Jersey farm that sells corn, tomatoes, squash, and tree fruit. The farm is run by two middle-aged sisters who recently took over management of the farm from their 80-year-old father. I was excited to see a farm run by women of a slightly older generation, so I asked them their thoughts. “Most of the time, other farmers treat us okay,” they told me, “although if we do something wrong, it’s, ‘oh those girls.’ We bring along [our brother] to market sometimes; he doesn’t know a thing about farming, but people just want to talk to ‘the man in charge.’” They took over the farm, they told me, because their husbands and brothers had to get “better” jobs that brought in more money. Without the expectation of being primary breadwinners, they were left as the ones who could keep the family farm alive.

In both conversation and personal thought about females and farming, I want to be careful to avoid gender essentialism. I do not want to make generalizations like, “women make good farmers because they like to nurture the earth,” or, “men are better with machines.” Gender expression, I believe, is a complex combination of socialization, culture, and genetics. Not being able to divorce these things from each other, I find it frustrating and counterproductive to base ideas or logic on what men or women are “naturally” like or good at doing.

That said, I acknowledge my shortcomings, like a lack of confidence with machines and power tools. Part of this is completely personal, gender aside; I happen to not be good with power tools, whereas I know many women who are. However, there is a gendered aspect to power-tool-confidence. My sister recently visited me in Philadelphia, and came to work with me on the farm. When I asked her what she wanted to work on, she replied, “anything with power tools,” explaining that she recently volunteered recycling old doors for a green-deconstruction non-profit with a male friend of hers.

When the staff person trained them, he offered a power drill to help, but spoke about it and handed it only to my sister’s male friend. Finally, the friend asked my sister if she, too, would like to use the power drill. My sister did, and had a great time.

My insecurity with machines and tools has several layers. I am not good at them, I suspect, because I was never encouraged to use them, so I never gained comfort or ability through practice. Now, I am afraid to practice because I am not good, and I do not want other people to notice and use their observations of my fumbling to further whatever ingrained ideas they have of women being bad with power tools. It gets rather angsty. I do not want to speak for all female-bodied farmers, but I think many of us feel like we have something to prove. I have to remind myself sometimes that just because I can’t shovel compost as fast or carry a wheelbarrow quite as full of watermelons, doesn’t mean that I am not strong or not a good farmer. We work together. And anyway, we all can handle wheelbarrows that are pretty darn full.

We never intentionally created a female dominated farm here at Henry Got Crops. Most of our applicants for internships and apprentices just happened to be female, and most of those qualified ended up being women. We have three female apprentices, two female interns, and one male intern. (We now have another — a big welcome to Ed, who is newly working with us this fall!) I am glad, though, to be able to offer a positive view of women as strong, hard, workers to the students here at Saul; I want the female students to know that they can be farmers if they want, or anything else they aspire toward. One of our Saul summer interns brought her boyfriend out to work with her one morning. “How did he like it?” I asked her the next day. “I brought him out so he would see how hard I work,” she replied. “He said it was fun, but really hard. He said he couldn’t do this every day.”

I have to admit, I was pretty proud.

Originally published on Beyond Green, h/t to Tom Laskawy

The New York Times ran a special food-themed issue of its Sunday magazine a week back. It was kicked off by a fine piece by Mark Bittman, who observed quite rightly that the conversation being had in the magazine’s pages reflects America’s new, and healthy, interest in what they’re eating.

Indeed, just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine this sort of interest, and even harder to imagine that the New York Times would countenance the sorts of politics espoused in Michael Pollan’s Farmer in Chief essay, or David Reiff’s subtle dissection of the Gates Foundation’s African Adventures.

I like David’s piece a great deal, not just because I appear in it as a reasonable person, but because he captures exactly what’s wrong about the Northern do-gooder in Africa. For the record, a mistake crept in to the piece – I’ve never actually met Raj Shah – but the piece certainly captures how I feel about the Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa.

And yet, despite all that, the issue had one or two gaping holes. Labour didn’t really get a look in and, most important, the entire issue was almost wholly silent on the issue of gender. One doesn’t have to look far to see women food producers and food-makers taking on the inequities of the modern food system. Just today, from their meeting in Maputo, the women of Via Campesina released this declaration. And Dan Moshenberg, who sends much of the finest material to me for this blog, took the lead in writing this letter to the editor which, alas, the editor decided not to print.

Dear Editor

The New York Times Magazine October 12th Food Issue is a measure of how far the debate around agriculture has come. A few years ago, it would have been inconceivable that Sunday’s glossy section could be devoted to a mosaic of pieces about the politics of food, from belly to bourse, from private purchases to public policy. We still, however, have far to go. One neglected element would have brought coherence to the disparate pieces: women.

Certainly, women were mentioned in the issue. Mark Bittman noted that cooking is no longer the exclusive purview, burden, or task of those called `housewives’. With women pressured or choosing to enter the waged labor force, men are encouraged or forced to cook for themselves and even, occasionally, for others. In her discussion of the ethical kashrut movement, Samantha M. Shapiro recalls the cultural and religious traditions of her own family, in which men would slaughter, skin and butcher animals, and women would purchase the meat, soak and salt it, and prepare it for the family. Michael Pollan urged the next President of the United States to expand the WIC program for low-income women with children.

There’s much to admire in, and much to debate over, these descriptions of women. But women are more than contemporary household cooks (since they are still a minority among paid chefs), more than the stories of how it was done in our family in the good old days, and more than the recipients of government handouts.

In much of the world, and in particular in the Global South, women are the primary toilers of the earth, even if they are a minuscule portion of the owners of land. For example, while women produce the majority of food consumed in the Global South, the OECD has noted that women own 1% of the land mass of Africa. If that seems a little far away, there are plenty of examples of women producing food closer to home – consider the fate of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a farmworker who died of heatstroke in May this year while harvesting grapes in California, the latest in a long line of women casualties in our modern food system.

Women aren’t only central to understanding how food is produced – it’s hard to tell the full story of food distribution and food consumption without them either. The food crisis discriminates against women – 60% of those going hungry are women and girls. Michael Pollan almost touched on this when he noted that in recent months more than 30 countries have experienced food riots which are, more often than not, protests that result from planned and coordinated action by women.

All of these stories, and the big story they add up to, is a story of women. Women farmers, women care providers, women wives, women mothers, women daughters, women aunts, women heads of households, women consumers, women workers, everywhere in the world. If food matters, as we certainly agree it does, then women must be accounted for because, when it comes to food, women count. Perhaps in the next food issue, the Times might move a little further to doing this particular piece of arithmetic.

Sincerely
Dan Moshenberg
Raj Patel

Photo: sajla1, women of Chhattisgarh

[Cross-posted from www.stuffedandstarved.org]