Reflections on the INternational YEar of the Woman Farmer

It all began with a flood. Well, to be more accurate, it really began with a couple of books.
I’ve wanted to be a farmer since I was in sixth grade, but growing up in Chicago in the 1980s, “farmer” was not considered a career. I went to college thinking I was going to be a wildlife biologist and three books immediately changed my thinking – The Violence of the Green Revolution by Vandana Shiva, What are People For by Wendell Berry, and The Permaculture Design Manual by Bill Mollison. Together they made me recognize that I would not be content only observing nature as a wildlife biologist would, and that there was very much a contemporary and active role for farmers to play in the world as environmentalists.  Because I happened to go to college near two Ojibwe tribes and have the privilege of Anishenabe teachers, I also came to understand that humans were very much the “younger sibling” of a very wise community of more-than-human kin.  Additionally understanding United States history from a perspective of the first nations was the beginning of my conviction that environmental sustainability cannot be separated from social justice. Over time, I have also come to understand that farming is critical for community – on so many levels.

As a farmer I am a living member of a complex system – only one part of many.  As a grower, I have many choices to make that will either foster that dynamic assembly of relationships to create abundance, or I try to simplify that system, thereby making more work for myself and requiring a lot more fossil fuel energy in machine power and materials.

I interned on two farms in college, which cemented my convictions about becoming a farmer.  After my Master’s degree, I went back to Chicago for a couple of years.  The goal was to earn enough money for a down payment on a farm.  Two moments also stand out to me about that time – all the non-profits in Chicago used to get together for lunch once a month to coordinate efforts.  I vividly remember the sense of vertigo in the room when it sank in that should something happen to the Eisenhower Expressway, the city had less than 24 hours worth of food in it.

The second was serving on a statewide network that allocated state dollars to the four land grant universities for agriculture research.  I watched first-hand as the money never made it to the innovative proposals even as farmers were going out of business by the year.  I realized that I needed to get on with my farming plan because I could work on innovation as a practitioner, outside the dominant systems.

As I was writing my first business plan and looking for land, I envisioned a conventional organic vegetable and fruit farm – a couple of acres of crops managed with tractor tools.  With cover crops, of course.

A year or two later, I was staring at my market garden plot on my new farm, which was under water from 7 inches of rain in 24 hours.  I couldn’t plant until July.

I realized even then, in 2001, that such extreme weather was only going to repeat as climate change got worse.  I was never going to farm successfully with a tractor on the land I had.  There is all sorts of advice about starting a farm.  I didn’t follow any of that good advice.  I decided where I wanted to live based on the kind of life I wanted. People need to eat everywhere they live, and most people in the United States today don’t grow their own food.  So, I was interested to develop a farm producing fruits and vegetables for the south shore of Lake Superior, and if the conditions of my land meant that I had to throw out much of what I had learned about organic market gardening, then I had to find and develop other models.

I went back to the ecological principles as I had learned them in the 1990s.  Looking back on it all 25 years into my farming career, I was also heavily influenced by the agriculture I saw in China, Ecuador and India, plus what I learned about historic wetland farming in Mexico and from my Anishenabe neighbors.  

I farm in Zone 4 northern Wisconsin.  We may have snow cover until the middle of May, and a hard freeze in September.  It has indeed snowed for the fourth of July before.  Climate change is making the temperatures warmer earlier, but crucially, not _consistently_ warmer.  So plants will break dormancy, and then experience frost damage.  Additionally, the climate is getting drier and colder in the summers.  All of this means I farm on marginal land in a marginal climate, getting more marginal every year.

I am never bored.

I recently told a room full of agricultural leaders that I don’t farm with a tractor (much), and I could hear the gasps across the room.  

Let me talk for a moment about efficiency – that great driver of all things government and industry.  I can get food to my customers reliably all year round.  It doesn’t matter if it’s flooding, or in full drought.  There has been more than one June where I got out produce shares several weeks ahead of my esteemed fellow CSA farmers who use large machinery.

I grow vegetables for 50 families on a quarter of an acre.  

I have limited vulnerability to fossil fuel costs.  Including the ones externalized to society.

Instead of getting larger I have internalized every input I can – pest control and mowing and fertility all come from my animals.  I save more than half of the seeds I need.  I have a backbone of perennial crops with roots that can withstand climate extremes.

​You find me a model more efficient than this.

Women farmers in the United States have long been underrecognized for their work.  It took a class action lawsuit to get fully counted on the agriculture census.  Right now, women – as counted – make up about a third of farmers in the U.S.  Internationally, women have always been the agriculturalists.  That men dominate agriculture in the U.S. is a phenomenon only a century old, following industrialization of farming.  U.S. women farmers work a larger percentage of small farms as compared to large ones, so as I think about encouraging the next generation of women in farming, I think about the supports they might need, especially as small farmers.

My Ph.D. research was about surfacing the persistence strategies of women organic farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and some key patterns that emerged included having a network of support, and having a way to weather the ten-year start-up phase (more aligned with learning an art than starting a business).  There are a lot more resources now than when I got started: mentorship programs with Land Stewardship or Marbleseed, the WI Dairy Apprentice Program, FSA loans for startup, microloans and grants from local Coops to help with infrastructure development, and alternative models of land access and equipment sharing.

Other notable state programs include the recent Local Food Procurement Assistance program as Wisconsin implemented it, the Food Policy Councils of Iowa, the cottage food regulations and small cheesemaking business regulations in Minnesota, the Food Systems research coming out of Michigan, and, outside the Midwest, Pennsylvania’s state level Farm Bill work.  Wisconsin’s Secretary of Agriculture regularly has the Board hear from other state departments, firmly planting agriculture as Not Separate from environmental regulations, public health, transportation, education, etc.

250 years after the founding of our nation, agriculture is still the bedrock of our democracy.  Women are at the forefront of something called Civic Agriculture all over America – farms are part of the economic and social fabric of communities.  Lose the farms, lose our self determination.

​Food is freedom, ya’ll.  Women are its champions.