Women Farmers Shaping the Future of Food and Agriculture Systems
By Donna Kilpatrick
It's early morning outside Perryville, Arkansas. A scissor-tailed flycatcher perches on the fence, cattle graze in the bottoms, and Sam Noble begins her day in the chicken brooder at the Heifer Center for Regenerative Agriculture.
There's nothing unusual about a woman starting her day this way. Women have always farmed. They've raised livestock, managed farms, saved seed, sold food, and cared for the land. What's changed is that we're finally getting better at seeing them.
That visibility matters.
Sam is Heifer USA's Poultry Coordinator, and she's part of a growing number of women farmers and ranchers across the United States. Since 2002, the percentage of women producers has increased steadily. According to the USDA, women represent over 36 percent of all U.S. producers.
Some of that increase is due to how we count. In 2012, the USDA changed the way it collected census information, allowing farms to identify more than one primary operator. That simple change made women's contributions more visible in the official numbers.
But the numbers are catching up to something many of us working in agriculture have known for a long time: women are already doing the work... and have been doing so for a long time.
Being counted is one thing. Being recognized is another. Even today, Sam and the other women livestock managers at Heifer USA encounter assumptions that come with being women farmers. Sam's response isn't to try to prove that she can farm like a man.
"To me, being a woman farmer doesn’t mean proving that I can do it as well as a man," she says. "It means that I bring something unique to farming—a different perspective, different knowledge, and a deep connection to the land."