greenliving
Ag Network to collectively advocate for a stronger voice. “Throughout history, women in ag-
riculture have been relegated to provid- ing assistance, rather than making deci- sions,” O’Brien explains. “It’s up to us as women to collaboratively support each other while challenging the system.”
SOIL SISTERS Female Farmers Come of Age
by Lisa Kivirist M
ore women are becoming farm- ers, bringing with them a pas- sion for producing organic and
sustainably raised fare and transforming America’s food system. The U.S. Census of Agriculture reports that their numbers rose by more than 20 percent between 2002 and 2012, to 288,264.
Historic Roots “Women have played an integral role in farming for centuries, but in the last 100 years they’ve started to self-organize and be recognized for their important work,” says University of California gar- den historian Rose Hayden-Smith, Ph.D., author of Sowing the Seeds of Victory: American Gardening Programs of World War I and editor of the UC Food Observ- er. “During that war, the Women’s Land Army of America, a female-led initiative, recruited nearly 20,000 mostly middle- class urban and suburban women to enter the agricultural sector as wage laborers at farms, dairies and canner- ies, often in rural areas, where farmers urgently needed help while the male labor force was off fighting.” Women also helped feed Ameri- cans during the Victory Garden era of
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World War II. “It’s also estimated that more than 40 percent of fruits and vegetables consumed on the American home front then were grown in school, home, community and workplace gardens,” says Hayden-Smith, possibly resulting in America’s highest period of produce consumption ever. When the commercial organic
industry launched in the 1990s, women organized to provide overlooked and undervalued perspectives. The wake- up call for Denise O’Brien, an organic vegetable farmer and owner of Rolling Hills Acres, near Atlantic, Iowa, came during the farm economic crisis of the preceding decade. Although still con- sidered “just” farm wives, “It was the women on the farms that had foreseen where things were heading, because they often kept the accounting books, though nobody took their voices seri- ously,” O’Brien recalls. This launched O’Brien’s agri-
culture activism: balancing farming, raising children and serving as a national advocate and spokeswoman for women in agriculture in an eco- logical and just food system. In 1997, she launched the Women, Food and
www.NaturalAwakeningsLI.com
Cultivating Change For her 50th birthday, Paula Foreman gave her life a new chapter. She launched her midlife “second act” in 2007 with Encore Farm, a name that serves as a rallying mantra for her peers. “The name is a tribute declaring that fresh starts and new beginnings can happen at any age,” explains Foreman, now an urban farmer in St. Paul, Minnesota. Embodying this business moxie, she chose to spe- cialize, producing one thing very well: organic dried beans. Relinda Walker, of Walker Organic
Farms, outside Savannah, Georgia, represents a cadre of “boomerang” farmers; women that return to the land to continue a family farm with a com- mitment to organics. Like many farm kids, after college, Walker left to pursue a corporate career in the city. Then the 9/11 terror attack shifted her priori- ties. “All roads led me to coming back home and growing food,” she says. Launched in 2005, Walker’s farm was one of southern Georgia’s first organic operations, yielding specialty varieties like rainbow carrots in vivid shades of purple, orange and red.
Future Femme Power Young women in their 20s and 30s are adding energy, diversity, vibrancy and fresh outlooks to the female farming movement. Lindsey Morris Carpenter runs Grassroots Farm, in Monroe, Wisconsin, a diversified operation of certified organic vegetables and pastured livestock, in partnership with her mother, Gail Carpenter. “A crucial key to farming happi- ness is being a good neighbor,” she shares. “I call around when I see live- stock and pets outside of fences; main- tain my fences; share my garlic and potato seed; and always invite neighbors to parties and events, even though they may not attend. Even if others’ personal lifestyle and farming philosophies are
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