Our Year

“This is your year!” a customer recently exclaimed, and I had to ask them what they were talking about. Evidently 2026 has been deemed Year of the Woman Farmer by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. From the looks of the internet, our very own USDA has been planning for it, too. Funny, I thought every year was year of the woman farmer, at least in my life. Look around the market and you will see plenty of other women farmers who have been here week after week, year after year. Some of them you don’t get to see because while their family shows up on Sundays, they’re back at home taking care of the farm and the family, working on multiple fronts, much of it unpaid.

According to the FAO, the unpaid work of women in agriculture adds up to at least $10.8 trillion dollars each year to the global economy. Yes, that’s trillion with a tr…each year.

If you examine history, agriculture was traditionally the realm of women while all the men had to do was pray and make war. Just take a look at traditional planting of corn, squash, and beans together, which is referred to as the three sisters, not the three brothers.

In the United States after WWII, the roles in agriculture have typically been male dominated, not just the farmers but for anything related to farming--machinery sales and repairs, seed and fertilizer sales, ag loans, haulers, processors, veterinarians.  When I entered agriculture forty years ago, it was definitely a male-centric industry, and I struggled to enter the good ol’ boys farm club until the early aughts when the women began forming their own groups and financing their own operations independent of low interest loans offered by the USDA.

Over the last twenty-five years in the United States there’s been a significant shift with women being directly involved and recognized in all aspects of agriculture. According to the USDA, 36% of primary operators of farms in the U.S. are women. They manage over 407 million acres with $222 billion in sales. In overall agricultural operations, 58% of all farms have women involved. I’ve seen plenty of these gals over the years. Their husbands/fathers do most of the chore work sticking them with the cooking, cleaning, kids, laundry, errands, bookkeeping while also depending on them to fill in on the farm when needed. They’re also the ones who needed to hold a full-time off-farm job that provided health insurance on top of all that unpaid labor of being a farm woman.  

One of the biggest statistics that jumped out at me is cattle operations have the highest number of women principal producers of any agricultural sector with 30% involved—not vegetables or flowers as one might suspect. These statistics are from the Census of Agriculture, and arm of the USDA tasked with tracking the numbers, but up until 2002 even they didn’t recognize women in agriculture on their forms creating an uphill battle when it came to funding.  When the government finally recognized us, lumping us into a category of Socially Disadvantaged Farmers, all it managed to do was anger the old white men establishment and cause further alienation. They made fun of us because we wanted to use organic/biodynamic/sustainable/regenerative methods. Not only were women farmers undercounted, but we were also underestimated. Some of that unpaid work included leadership roles on boards and as officers from the local to federal level. When we took the reins of our farms, we chose to diversify, direct market, and innovate value-added revenue streams.

Another interesting tidbit from the USDA census, women farmers are smart. Those running farms and ranches are more highly educated than their male counterparts with 61% of principal operators having a post-secondary education compared to 47% of their male counterparts. 92% of those women have a bachelor’s degree or higher and their education doesn’t stop after college. Women in agriculture often advocate for their industry in ways that promote both community and ongoing education. Guess who has been the main drivers to get healthy, locally produced foods into their children’s schools. And we are still fighting that battle against the industrial food complex and our own government.

I’m grateful that a global organization wants to raise awareness as to the role of women in the food system and the challenges we continue to face. While I don’t like to prelude my vocation with my gender, I’ve bumped up against every single obstacle mentioned by the FAO and USDA throughout the course of my farming and guess what…I’m still here along with all the other women farmers of Central Farm Markets making sure that you get fed.