More Women Pick Up Plow

Excerpted and reprinted with permission from The Community Farm

Ames, Iowa, is the very heartland of corn and soybean production in the United States. There, a new breed of farmers are emerging to pick up the plow: women. Mary Swalla Holmes, communications coordinator with Ecumenical Ministries of Iowa, said in an interview with the Ames Tribune, “More and more agricultural land in Iowa is owned by women,” and that “women in particular seem to be more focused on making land a legacy for the future and less focused on commodity agriculture.” Holmes said in a recent survey produced by the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, Cass County women landowners were asked for a wish list of what they would like to see on their land. “They said they wanted more forests, more ponds, more animal habitats and vineyards. They want to see what the land is capable of being.”

More generally, according to Laura Sayre in an article for newfarm.org (Landed Jersey Girls), the consensus is that the number of women in organic agriculture is on the rise. “As such, it provides another example of how organic farming is at the forefront of more widespread trends in American agriculture.” It appears that in the U.S., organic farm operations are “more than twice as likely to be women as are farm operators generally.”

Community Supported Agriculture farms [a partnership that provides a direct link and shared responsibility between growers and consumers] are the champs for women in agriculture. It seems evident that CSA is, at some level, a women’s movement.