Since 1997 there has been a significant increase in the number and percentage of Kansas farmers who are women. Using Reskin and Roos’ model of “job queues and gender queues” I analyze changes in the agricultural industry in Kansas that resulted in more women becoming “principal farm operators” in the state. I find there are three changes largely responsible for women increasing their representation in the occupation: an increase in the demand for niche products, a decrease in the average farm (...) size, and greater societal acceptance of women as farmers. This study adds to the growing literature on women principal farm operators in developed countries, and is among the first to explore why women are becoming a larger percentage of the occupation in the United States. (shrink)

On the 20th anniversary of its publication, this classic manifesto is updated with an important new preface by the author. Freire reflects on the impact his book has had, and on many of the issues it raises for readers in the 1990s. These include the fundamental question of liberation and inclusive language as it relates to Freire's own insights and approaches.

Small-scale, artisanal livestock production is framed as “other” by conventional livestock producers, and rural communities. This alterity, although not without cost, allows women to be involved as active entrepreneurs and managers in artisanal livestock production and also allows farmers to pursue management strategies with the explicit purpose of enhancing animal welfare. The case study presented here, an artisanal goat dairy farm managed by three women, demonstrates that by embracing feminine care identities, these women carve a space for themselves within livestock (...) production in which they can pursue their own economic and affective goals. Analysis of ethnographic data also demonstrates that farmers’ decision-making regarding animal production is based on both affective and instrumental concerns. If we are to understand and operationalize the affective component of farmer decision making based on the livestock–farmer relationship, we must begin to consider to what extent livestock themselves are social actors. (shrink)

A theoretical model for farm succession is developed in which identity-related variables such as preferences for working autonomously or with animals influence occupational choice at the outset of the process, while environmental factors such as farm size and income prospects gain in importance during the latter stages of succession. A survey of 14-to-34-year-old potential farm successors in Switzerland is carried out to test the model. While female respondents focus on identity-related factors when making occupational choices, the model can be verified (...) for several influencing variables for male successors, such as continuing the family tradition and the potential conversion of farmland to building land. For both men and women, the prospect of working alongside their parents is an important factor in the decision to take over the family farm. (shrink)

Interviews with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) growers in Iowa, a majority of whom are women, shed light on the relationship between gender and CSA as a system of resource management. Growers, male and female alike, are differentiated by care and caring-practices. Care-practices, historically associated with women, place priority on local context and relationships. The concern of these growers for community, nature, land, water, soil, and other resources is manifest in care-motives and care-practices. Their specific mix of motives differs: providing safe (...) and nutritious food, educating self and others, and building relationships with other growers, shareholder-members, and the land. Care-practices include reducing or eliminating chemical usage, encouraging or accepting beneficial insects and wildlife, building soil, and creating resource management partnerships with shareholder members. CSA, viewed through a lens of care, may offer a means of transcending gender stereotypes. (shrink)

In 2007 new meat inspection regulations standardizing meat production throughout the Province of British Columbia (BC), Canada came into effect moving food for local consumption closer to continentally harmonized production standards. Critics argue that the economic viability of small-scale livestock farmers is threatened. Small-scale women farmers are central to the creation of alternative local agri-food networks in BC. Using gender as an analytically enabling tool this paper argues that public food-safety regulation can create the conditions for the dominance of private (...) agri-food governance. The discursive creation of a feminized privileged consumer legitimates much non-democratic agri-food governance. The paper argues that more just and ecologically sustainable futures require a ‘gender troubling’ of agri-food governance in which the privileged identity of the food consumer is reconstructed as global citizen in the context of the food sovereignty of the farmers who produce their food. (shrink)

Using a nationally representative survey of farm operators in Ireland, this study examines the effect of non-pecuniary benefits from farm work on labor allocation choices. Results suggest that non-pecuniary benefits affect both the decision to enter the off-farm labor market and also once that decision is made, the amount of time spent working off-farm. We find our derived variable representing non-monetary benefits associated with farm work to have a substantial impact similar to the effect of other more widely reported personal (...) and farm structural variables such as the age of the farm operator, farm size, and farming system. The existence of these non-pecuniary benefits serves to increase the implied wage to farmers for their farm work. This in turn can lead to allocations of labor that would seem suboptimal from a purely financial point of view. Rural development policies aimed at creating off-farm opportunities could fail unless returns to off-farm work are high enough to compensate the farmer for losing the benefits associated with the farming lifestyle. From a methodological perspective, our analysis indicates that failure to model off-farm labor allocation choices as a two-part process may lead to some incorrect conclusions regarding the effect of certain explanatory variables. Outside of explaining farmers’ off-farm labor supply it would be useful to incorporate farmer perceptions regarding the non-pecuniary benefits from farming in economic models of farm behavior across a range of activities as this could lead to much more accurate predictions of farmers’ responses to policy changes. (shrink)

Civic agriculture is characterized in the literature as complementary and embedded social and economic strategies that provide economic benefits to farmers at the same time that they ostensibly provide socio-environmental benefits to the community. This paper presents some ways in which women farmers practice civic agriculture. The data come from in-depth interviews with women practicing agriculture in Pennsylvania. Some of the strategies women farmers use to make a living from the farm have little to do with food or agricultural products, (...) but all are a product of the process of providing a living for farmers while meeting a social need in the community. Most of the women in our study also connect their business practices to their gender identity in rural and agricultural communities, and redefine successful farming in opposition to traditional views of economic rationality. (shrink)

An ongoing crisis in Australian agriculture resulting from climate crises including drought, decreasing irrigation water, more recent catastrophic flooding, and an uncertain policy environment is reshaping gender relations in the intimate sphere of the farm family. Drawing on research conducted in the Murray-Darling Basin area of Australia we ask the question: Does extreme hardship/climate crises change highly inequitable gender relations in agriculture? As farm income declines, Australian farm women are more likely to be working off farm for critical family income (...) while men continue to work on farm often in circumstances of damaged landscapes, rising debt, and limited production. This paper examines the way gender relations are being renegotiated in a time of significant climate crisis. Our research suggests that climate crises have indeed led to changes in gender relations and that some changes are unexpected. Whereas one would logically assume that women’s enhanced economic contribution would increase their power in gender negotiations, we argue that this does not necessarily occur because their contribution is viewed as a farm survival strategy. Men are committed to prioritizing the farm and view women’s income generating work as critical to this purpose and yet, paradoxically, long for a return to traditional farm roles. We find that women are actively resisting traditional gender relations by reshaping a role for themselves beyond the farm—in the process moving physically and mentally away from a farm family ideology, questioning gender inequalities, and by extension their relationships. (shrink)