Agriculture Needs More Women

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

This long Atlantic article makes the case that women are more empathetic and sensitve and that those emotions are needed in agricutlure.  Further, the author says that industrial agriculture no longer requires more brawn than brains, so that women can handle nearly all the physical aspects of farm work.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/agriculture-needs-more-women/279987/

"Producer women seem to feel the same way as consumer women. The women I met in agriculture showed a clear preference for working on organic and small farms, which are more likely than factory farms to reflect the values of animal welfare, human health, and environmental sustainability."

"Food will be safer, and animals will live better, if more women work in agriculture."

The author makes the point that women and men think and feel differently and that men do not share the same affinity with livestock that women do.

Although somewhat long, the article is worth reading through.  

[turkey feather]

Ok, I read it and I am skeptical. I have decided this is not the place to say more.

[Suey73]

I read it too.   I think she needs to spend a bit more time at the end of a hoe or a bean hook on a 90 degree day.    Then she'll be ready to bring on the Round up!   Maybe she can figure out how to put a 500# sow where she does not want to go.   Will she still think I am compasionate after observing me win that battle.  

I,  a woman,  would have never been able to farrow over 400 litters a year without farrowing crates.   I absolutely hate to ethanize and therefore  probably let too many live that cost more to feed than they are ever worth.     Without modern agriculture  women couldn't do it.    I am not a very strong armed woman.   Putting on  PTO shafts has always been hard.  The new modern ones are next to impossible.   According to her women would make more decisions with their hearts not their minds.   Too many heart decisions and a woman won't be farming too much longer.    

I'd never be able to get a combine or planter ready for the field.    But,  then he'd have no idea how to fill out accounting records.   

Did she do any research at Ag Universities  to see the diversity in the classroom?    Did she look into 4-H or FFA?  

Yes,  I can drive a tractor... but,  I have no idea how to prepare it for field work.   I'd say out here the ratio in the cabs,tractors, combines, and trucks is about 1 to 10 out here.   

Overall,  I thought she was saying if the women ruled the farms  we'd be all organic.   

[Kay/NC]

Jim, I have often said that it is women who set the moral tone of any culture, at least any civilized one. That tends to temper certain instincts of men.

How this translates to a need for more of us in American Ag creates a sort of quandary. Do people really think the bins of produce at the loacl supercenter are going to remain brimming with produce that is gathered by some Pollyanna on a calico print apron?

I think it is far more likely that women will be changed by agriculture's current needs, than vice versa. I have been farming for most of the last fifty-plus years. As a kid put to work at six, doing the knds of chores that the extensive hand labor of farming required then, I can say I do not want to turn back to that drudgery.

We have spoken on this page before about the overly-romanticized view that makes for an interesting genre' of writing by female authors. It is sort of a banjo-strumming, hand- picking pile of horse excrement.

There is a lot about animal agriculture that could be changed, and due to the influence of women in it, I know that some of it has changed. These systems do have their limits of flexibility, though.

When people ask me if we name all the pigs that we raise, I have to laugh and say, " It is kind of hard to come up with a couple thousand new names every week, you know." The corollary I taught our kids was this:Never name anything that you may eat someday.

I found a lot of this article very interesting and familiar...females have long been known to make better farrowing farm workers, for example.

What worries me is that when men allow women into an occupation or profession in droves, it is usually becasue they perceive it as entering its end game. We all know the one in six isn't always a lady on a tractor, as much as she's a widow who signs as operator.

I believe that this paradigm shift is not yet ripe to come to fruition. Men are having too much fun in these high times.

[manureseller]

Interesting but unrealistic in so many aspects.  Women bring a different aspect to business thinking then men there is no doubt about it, we are wired different in our thought processes but to say that one gender is better over the other is a bit of a stretch.  Frankly there aren't alot of women in professional aspects of Agriculture that impress me and I'm a female in agriculture.  Too many times the younger ones coming out of college are trying to use other "favors" instead of their brains.  It takes a certain personality to deal on both sides of the gender line at a business professional level in the ag. sector.

[wt51015]

If you look at Temple Grandin, she practically had to knock heads to get men to change their ways of  managing livestock. Only when she showed them that it was more profitable to do her way versus their way, did their minds change. I am probably much more patient than 99% of men and many, many women when it comes to moving hogs. It's not forcing a sow to go where she doesn't want to, it's changing her mind so that she wants to go where you want to. That is detail oriented, something us women are known for, but often shortchanged credit by our male counterparts. Their impatience at the slightest **bleep** in a system lead many to throw out the entire system instead of bringing out the small hammer and pinging the **bleep** out of it. It's called improving on a system instead of spending money on a new one.

[Kay/NC]

Compared to men working livestock, women have to rely less on muscle power, and more on cooperative educator get the animals to do what we want.  We can be far more likely to nurture young animals, and empathize with the females that bear and raise them.  

[wt51015]

There are families headed by women that plant small tracts to vegetables. Those are usually ones that are deemed by men as too wasteful and inefficient to drive a 24 row planter on. Details matter more in a small parcel of land than it does in 5000 acre farm that can be outsourced for spraying or crop scouting. There are some women who are more "male" in their thinking than some men. Lot comes down to their upbringing. That is really what the jest of the article is. With more hydraulics, labor saving machinery, and computers, women could do more of the physical work than they could in the past. If only men would let them. 

As for the comment of the pollyannaish picture, are we not already using that by urging farm women to be the public relations front with consumers? This was the result of a survey that showed that consumers were more likely to believe a farm woman than a farming male.

[Kay/NC]

You are right, soecially we agree on men " allowing" women to take over: On land they deem marginal, in productiion methods thst most men haven't really bought into, and to put a good face on farming.

I am not so sure I agree that details matter less whenan operation gets bigger. If you make a mistake in a large scale, the results can be disastrous.

Interesting thread, as it turns out....

[wt51015]

Merely stating that if one small area, say less than 10 acres, doesn't grow just right, the other acres will more than make up for the loss in production. That is why most farmers around here would rather put the small tracts in CRP than deal with them.  However if a detail oriented person wanted to live off one of those small tracts, every sq. foot better be the best.