SHATTERING THE GRASS CEILING: Empowering Female Farmers

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO EXTENSION

Jessica McAleese is one half of the team that runs Swift River Farm in Salmon, Idaho. Statewide, 70 percent of farm operations involve at least one woman operator.

BY KURT ORZECK

The Marlboro man, taking a long drag off his cigarette after a hard day’s work roping steer. The lone ranger with crow’s feet around his eyes who just wants a dang pair of jeans that are designed for his comfort. The hero in just about every cowboy movie ever made: a husband and father, protecting his wife and family on the homestead.

We all know the imagery. It’s part of the American cultural canon, after all. If there’s a ranch, there’s a man who owns, supervises, and protects it while his wife tends to the children. That’s how it is and how it’s always been in the United States.

Right?

But what if the symbolic vision of the American heartland that we’ve believed our entire lives isn’t true? What if there’s more to the story than just one cowboy running every ranch in the U.S.? What if that iconic portrait is only, say, 39 percent true?

Well, if we embraced those ideas, however far-fetched they may seem, we’d simultaneously take a big step closer to reality.

That’s according to recent studies by a team of researchers, including professors at the University of Idaho. Due to new methods of data collection, they’ve found that women farmers were severely undercounted—and thus unrepresented—in statistics collected by the federal government.

A few months ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture— through which educators received a $500,000 grant for the studies—extended the project until July of next year. Using more accurate methods of evaluating farm operations across the U.S., they discovered that the female population among farmers and ranchers is much higher than any of us previously thought.

It turns out that Idaho has a higher percentage of women farmers and ranchers (39 percent) compared to the national average (36 percent). Other numbers presented in the studies are even more striking: roughly 70 percent of farm operations in Idaho involve at least one woman operator, compared with the national average of 55 percent.

“The history of U.S. agriculture has been written around men: men farmers, men hunters,” said Paul Lewin, who is an associate professor and director of rural studies and digital economy programs at U of I. “But the data collection has been wrong all this time.”

Until recently, the USDA reported its census data to the U.S. Census Bureau, which in turn used that data to make determinations about demographics across the country. The problem is that not until 2002 did the census change to consider up to three operators of a farm instead of just one. Further changes in census data brought that number of operators up to four in 2017.

The new data makes clear that the larger number of women ranchers and farmers is neither trendy nor anomalous. In fact, the real tradition in America—what should even be con- sidered the stereotype, perhaps—isn’t that a man owns and operates a farm or ranch by himself, but rather that a father and husband who does so with the help of his wife and children. Researchers found even more striking discoveries in the studies conducted with sociology Professor Ryanne Pilgeram and Assistant Professor Monica Fisher, also at U of I, and Katherine Dentzman, an assistant professor in rural sociology and rural public policy at Iowa State University.

While some of the census data at issue stemmed from the 2017 census count, it wasn’t until October of last year that the researchers summed up their findings in an academic paper about gender differences in the financial performance of U.S. farm businesses.

Farmer Katherine Nietmann frequently speaks as part of University of Idaho’s small farm education program, Cultivating Success TM.

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO EXTENSION

The authors of the study didn’t mince words, writing that they reached the conclusion that “Farm operation is among the most gender-unequal occupations in the U.S.... Decomposition analysis indicates the gender gap is almost entirely explained by differences in endowments.”

The scholars point to other problems with data collection beyond the U.S. Census’s evolving threshold for how many ranch operators are counted. Because most farms are passed on from patriarch to eldest son, women are at a disadvantage in terms of power, prestige, and knowledge about farming.

Thus, “Female farmers have lower farm profitability than their male counterparts because their operations use far less capital (land, machinery, and labor), they have less farming experience, and they engage in the production of commodities that are less profitable,” according to the study.

Idaho has a higher percentage of female farmers as compared to the national average.

PHOTO BY KAREN DAY

Lewin said that, in light of the findings in his studies, “We need to start considering [more educational] programming for women. Women tend to be the primary caregivers for children…Women are running the households. When we pass ranchers to the next generation, we have to consider women.”

Pilgeram, who began researching women ranchers and farmers in Idaho and is the lead researcher and project manager for the new studies, said she started looking into the issue more than 20 years ago, when she was in graduate school.

“I grew up on a ranch in Montana to a very conventional family,” she said. “I remember an aunt saying my brother would run the ranch. It was just assumed that would happen, based on our cultural norms. The women I knew were doing the work as farmers and ranchers—they just didn’t view themselves that way.”

Colette DePhelps, a U of I area extension educator who specializes in community food systems, noted that the heredity gap results in male heirs inheriting a whopping 80 percent of farms.

“Farm succession is huge,” she said. “Women have always been farmers, but they haven’t been recognized as ‘real’ farmers, according to the rural ideal. Even women don’t self-identify as they should. They [often say,] ‘I’m the farm helper’ or ‘I’m the farmer’s wife.’”

“If we start focusing in a forward-thinking way for women to be successful in ranching and farmers and careers…we can start putting together more representative educational programs,” DePhelps added.

PHOTO BY KAREN DAY

Teresa Little, Idaho’s First Lady, participates in sheering sheep at her family’s ranch which has been operating for generations. Still, across the United States, farm operation is among the most gender-unequal occupations.

PHOTO BY KAREN DAY

To that end, U of I offers Annie’s Project, an online course intended to empower Idaho women involved in agriculture. DePhelps noted that the institution will also offer more succession planning education for small and mid-size farms, which could help normalize women inheriting farms instead of men.

It’s hard to predict what the new findings will mean more generally for ranches and farms going forward. If the U.S. Census changes its methodology to account for more than four farm operators, the data could skew even more female.

But the professor also alluded to an entirely different trend, one that might send a shiver up the collective spine of ranchers and non-ranchers alike.

“We very well might see another plateau [in gender proportion],” he said, “because more corporations are buying more land than ever…and corporations don’t have a gender.”