The key to the future of food
[Music]
eight years ago i was shopping at my
local farmers market
when i stopped and took a step back out
of the busy corridor
that was just bursting with fresh
produce i wanted to take it all in
this beautiful but temporary art gallery
that just springs up in the middle of a
street
every week as i watch people buzz around
from stand to stand
i notice something behind every single
farm table
was a woman now i knew women farmed
many of them were my friends and
neighbors but there was something
different about that day
about that moment i’ve replayed it over
and over
why had they suddenly become visible to
me
had women farmers just recently shown up
on the scene
or had they always been there so i went
to the library to figure it out
and what i learned is that women farmers
are missing from the narrative
from the data from the picture
it wasn’t until the 1978 census of
agriculture
that the usda even began to track gender
so up until 40 years ago women farmers
were not even
counted and when i did find women in
books or magazine articles they were
farmers wives
or daughters often without a story of
their own
i began to ask what happens when women
go uncounted
when they’re left out of the story when
they’re not even in the picture
that began my journey
i borrowed a camera from a friend she
showed me how to use it
and i set out to learn to how to take
pictures
but i didn’t want to just take portraits
i wanted to capture what i couldn’t find
at the library
female farmers farming
i have photographed and visited hundreds
of female farmers across the country
as they’ve driven tractors mucked stalls
and tented seedlings i hoped my
photographs would make them feel
seen but i also wanted everyone else
little girls consumers
even policy makers to really see these
farmers
to put their lives and realities and
challenges back in the picture
so why photos we can look at pie charts
all day long but until we see the faces
and hands of these farmers
the story of american agriculture is
incomplete
we all know this guy right he’s the
stereotype of the american farmer
he’s part of the americana lore of red
barns and green tractors
but anastasia looks different from that
guy
and she farms differently too she lives
alone on a ranch in southern arizona
where she raises goats and grows garlic
i visited on a june day when the
temperatures reached 110 degrees
that desert terrain is tough but so is
she
down the road from anastasia lived joe
thirty years ago she and her husband
george opened a butcher shop
and it became the go-to facility for
neighboring farmers
after george passed away joe closed the
shop
but when she met anastasia they began to
dream about reopening together
however on the very day i visited
joe’s well went dry for the first time
ever
and without funding to drill a deeper
well
these two women were forced to abandon
their plans
for joe and anastasia that loss was
personal
their story illustrates the fact that
women have a harder time
obtaining loans and credit for the
community this loss reverberates
fewer meat processing options another
local business
lost and a missed opportunity
to transfer all of that skill and
knowledge
from one generation to the next
idzai immigrated from her native
zimbabwe in 2002
with her husband and four daughters her
first order of business was to find land
to farm and
a good school for her girls she got
started on a 30 by 40 foot garden plot
and now she leases the backyards of four
different homes in downtown san diego
she turns these urban yards into lush
productive life-giving spaces
it’s eyes days begin at four a.m when
she works an eight-hour shift
as an airport shuttle driver and then
she works the rest of the day on the
farm
her dream is to farm full-time but for
now she relies on the steady income of
the shuttle job
and she’s not alone two-thirds of
america’s female farmers
have a full-time job in addition to
their farm
and not just for the extra income but
for health care benefits
the challenges that female farmers face
will feel familiar to many of us
siri is a vegetable farmer here in
washington state
14 years ago she left a salary job in
public administration
to start farming a decision she doesn’t
regret
she says that farming is a good life
but the profit margins are thin and the
hours erratic
i took this photograph of siri years ago
when she was pregnant with her second
child
and now with two young children lack of
access to child care
remains a major hurdle to building up
her farm business
in fact child care comes up repeatedly
as i speak to women farmers
a 2015 study in the university of
vermont
told us that over 60 percent of all
farmers
surveyed reported child care problems
and it should come as no surprise that
women lead farms
were most impacted
siri cobbles together several part-time
fixes to the child care problem
but it isn’t enough and she yearns for
the time to focus
on business development and to advocate
for informed
farm policy all of that
gets lost in the scramble
i said earlier that i had a hard time
finding
the stories of women farmers in my
research at the library
and so i’ve had to dig deeper to unearth
their stories
i’ve been poring over the journals of a
farm woman who lived in ohio
in the early 1900s her name was lucy cox
her journals were sent to me by her
great-granddaughter
who transcribed lucy’s days during the
pandemic of 1918.
every day lucy would document the births
and deaths
illnesses and anniversaries in her
community all while preparing the hogs
for sale and
managing farm hands and preserving food
for the winter
but the flu pandemic of that time was
not the only crisis happening
there was a storm of crises as men left
to go fight in world war one
women were recruited to take over their
work
maybe you’ve heard of rosie the riveter
the symbol for the women who worked in
factories during world war
ii but have you heard of the farmerettes
of the women’s land army
in both world wars young women left
everything to live and work on farms
together they fed a nation at war
since then i have found farm women
stepping into leadership and activist
roles
in the 1950s maria moreno a texas-born
farm worker and mother of 12
was the first woman hired to organize
farm workers
she worked on campaigns to raise farm
worker wages
and outlaw child agricultural labor
during the 1980s farm crisis when farm
foreclosures were forcing millions off
their land and farmer suicide rates
were skyrocketing it was farm women like
mona lee brock
who became advocates and not only did
they
rally in washington dc to stop those
farm foreclosures
but they organize regional telephone
networks to answer the calls of farmers
who are on the brink of giving up not
only on the land
but on themselves
something else about female farmers i
noticed that their operations tend to be
a little more poly culture in nature
vegetable maybe some fruit small
livestock
like chickens and goats
they scale up slowly building their
businesses
around direct markets avoiding middlemen
and the export economy
instead of bank loans many rely on
crowdfunding
and community support i wondered why
women seem to be attracted to this type
of agriculture
and then dr pilgrim a researcher at the
university of idaho
suggested to me that i was asking the
wrong
question what if instead of being
attracted to it they were recreating it
what if these women locked out of modern
lending and farm systems
were tapping into something very old
something that echoed the agriculture
of our four mothers while also
innovating
through technology and markets to meet
the current moment
during the spring of 2020 when the food
system at large buckled due to covet 19
creating log jams in meat processing and
harvesting
record numbers of consumers turned to
these small and regional farms for food
while many large farms had to make
devastating decisions
like to dump milk and plow under their
crops
it was smaller farms many of them led by
women
they were able to be more agile pivoting
overnight from restaurant sales
to virtual farm stands i saw women
across the food system
working tirelessly to find solutions
like sophia pasteur who worked to rescue
and redirect over
10 million pounds of crops like potatoes
and onions
from eastern washington farms to western
washington food banks
in the south bronx karen washington
hosted
free farmers markets giving away tons
of fresh produce once again
in a crisis women came together to feed
a nation
but what if instead of turning to women
just in times of crisis we had supported
and funded them long before
what would our communities look like if
anastasia had taken over the butcher
shop
or idzai could quit her shuttle job or
siri had time
to strategize and lead foreign policy
efforts
in hobbling these women we have hobbled
ourselves
globally we face serious agricultural
challenges
how do we feed a growing population on
an increasingly arid planet do we
pandemic-proof our food systems
how do we prevent farmland from being
lost to development
and how do we create a food system that
pays
our farmers fairly for their product
these are gigantic problems and to find
solutions
we need the creativity and leadership of
women
throughout history women show up during
crisis
we feed our communities we pick up
shovels
and picket signs and we go to work
in anastasia it’s i in siri
i see glimmers of lucy on her farm
in ohio maria in california
mona li in oklahoma
and the farmerettes
when woven together their stories create
the quilt
of american agriculture past
and present
you’ve heard of the glass ceiling the
metaphor for the barriers that
women in business and politics face
these barriers exist for women in
agriculture too
i call it the grass ceiling and this
grass ceiling
harms not only women farmers but
all of us who care about the future of
food
in this country
women farmers need enthusiastic loyal
customers
but they also need tireless advocates
they need policies that address the very
real systemic issues
that keep women farmers from accessing
land
and growing their businesses
we need to fund women farmers by
designing more inclusive financial
models
and we need better data women farmers
deserve to be
recognized counted and
seen it has been
quite a journey from that day in the
farmers market to here today
and it’s been my honor to be on the
other side of the camera lens
putting women farmers back in the
picture helping you
to see them too but there is more work
to do
it is time to mow that grass ceiling
down
thank you