Cover Story - May 2009: Women's Changing Role on the Farm - from helpmate to full-time manager

Monday, May 4, 2009

Both on the farm and in industry organizations, women are increasingly taking an equal role and bringing their own set of skills to the task

By MARY BAXTER

If a male trucker picking up a shipment from Nightingale Farms ever makes the mistake of asking Carmina Halstead to fetch the boss, he'd better be prepared for a long stay. The diminutive 25-year-old has been known to make those who assume she's an office "chick" wait up to three hours to load.

Halstead and her brother, Bill, grow 1,300 acres of conventional and organic vegetables in Norfolk County and sell them to grocery chains such as Loblaws, Sobeys, A&P and Costco. She shrugs off such encounters as minor irritants, annoying hangovers from an era when men were considered the farmers and their wives helpmates.

Like many women in farming, Halstead isn't certain how much her gender plays into the challenges she encounters, the opportunities, failures or successes."It's more the character of the person," she says. Yet her conviction that a woman has as much of a right to farm as a man is unshakeable. "You have to have the drive to keep going, to really want it," she says, because "you will face hurdles. But if you really want it, you'll get by them."

It wasn't until the surprisingly recent 1991 federal decision to allow three farm operators per farm on the census after pressured to do so by farm women's groups that a formal accounting of their on-farm presence was fully realized. 

The change was one reflection of the growing recognition of women's contributions to agriculture. Their involvement as industry leaders has been another. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union and Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario welcomed their first female presidents Brigid Pyke in 1986, Nettie Wiebe in 1995 and Jenny Denhartog in 2002, respectively. During the 1990s, the Ontario Cattlemen's Association had two female presidents, Linda Barker in 1997 and Darlene Bowen in 1999. The Ontario Corn Producers appointed their first female president, Anna Bragg, in 1999. Since 2000, we've had two female provincial agriculture ministers.

Now, after 10 years of decline, the number of women farm operators is beginning to grow in Ontario. Between 2001 and  2006, there was a net gain of 240 farms with one female operator and  495 farms with a female operator listed among more than one operator.

In 2006, there were 23,530 female farm operators, a gain of 725 over 2001 numbers. During the same time period, Ontario's male farm operator numbers dropped 3,335 to 58,876.

The category defines an operator as someone responsible for the day-to-day management decisions made in the operation of a census farm or agricultural operation.
Results released from the U.S. farm census also show increases.    

So why is this happening and what implications might women's growing presence hold for the industry?

Over the past winter, I put these questions and others to a number of Ontario farm women of different generations involved in a variety of commodities. Some are leaders and policy-makers. Others are the main decision-makers on their farm. Still others work side-by-side with their husbands, or, like Halstead, work as a family member or business partner to build their business. Their answers reveal that women's involvement on farms today, like their male counterparts is virtually unrecognizable from a few generations ago, transformed by an accumulation of subtle, yet significant, changes. Achieving recognition is the greatest change, say Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Bette Jean Crews and Donna Lunn, a founding member of the Ontario Farm Women's Network, which has pushed hard to expand the farm operator category in the census. Ultimately these changes have meant that women who farm with their husbands now routinely become full, legal business partners.

Industry involvement
For Alice Uher, 52, who farms cash crops, sheep and hogs and operates a Purina feed dealership with her husband, Steve, near Blenheim in Chatham-Kent, that's a profound shift. She remembers how hard her mother worked on the family farm, but how little say she had in business decisions.

From the outset, Uher's relationship with her husband was one of equality. Farm and feed business decisions are jointly made "because we're dealing with big dollars," she says. "We can bounce a lot of things off of each other."

Greater involvement and visibility off-farm, not only in organizations but also in municipal, provincial and federal politics, is also inspiring women to get involved in industry-related activities. Lori Chamberlain, 45, who operates a 50-cow dairy with her husband, David, in Hastings County, recalls how excited she was to meet Lorraine Lapointe, the first female board member of Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) several years ago. "I think it's really important to get in there (and show that it can be done)," she says, having herself been a member of her county's milk committee and Jersey Canada's board of directors.  

Off-farm activities are also influencing life on the farm, says Norma Winters, a DFO board member. Winters, 47, runs a 40-cow dairy with her husband, Alan, on a 500-acre farm near Cornwall which was once managed by her grandmother. "I couldn't imagine my mother doing what I'm doing now," she says of her board work, noting that it's now more socially acceptable for her to be away from home and involved in committees ­and boards. Her mother, in contrast, never missed having a cooked meal ready for her father. Her husband is a lot more involved in raising the family. Male and female roles "aren't as defined today."

Interchanging roles are having an effect on farm business, too. For example, Brenda Lammens, 53, and chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association, says that when she and her husband, Raymond, took over his family's farm south of Tillsonburg, they shifted from growing grains and oilseeds to asparagus because it was something they could do more easily together.

That's also the case at the small goat dairy and processing plant near Arthur which Katie Wilman operates with her husband, Phillip. Having an operation that one of them could handle on their own, if necessary, was a factor in their decision to get into goats, she says, pointing out that Phillip holds a full-time job off-farm.

"We knew it would just be one person here quite often, so things are set up so that we can go out, milk the goats and process milk at the same time relatively quickly. We've got it down, so it's relatively simple," she says.

Even their nine-year-old son Gordon can feed the goats by himself.

Choosing to farm
Many point out that technological advances have helped to blur roles not only in a practical sense (making women's size and comparative lack of physical strength irrelevant). A related ideological shift has also helped. Increasingly complicated machinery has made it more difficult for farmers, male or female, to be the jack-of-all-trades they once were. In turn, it has become more acceptable to hire specialists, notes Annamarie Murray, 50, who operates a 45-cow dairy with her husband, David, near Mitchell.

Another shift over recent decades is that women are "choosing to farm rather than falling into it," says Cathy McKay, 55. McKay is the main operator on the 100-acre mixed farm and apple orchard south of Port Perry which she owns with her husband, Marvin Stevenson. Also, parents are more open to their daughters taking over the established family farm business, she says.

For Laura Kivits, 32, there was no hesitation – and no doubts – about taking over the family dairy farm in Dalkeith, an hour from Ottawa. She had grown up "in the barn," and worked on the farm after high school. She acquired it from her father in 2005 and, until the birth of her son, Liam, earlier this year, ran the 30-cow operation on her own. (Her husband, Doug, who previously worked off-farm, left his job shortly before their son was born temporarily to farm full-time with her).

Lammens argues that not only are younger generations of women making deliberate choices to farm, they're seeing the farm differently from their predecessors. "They look at the farm more as a business, rather than as just something that their father or their grandfather did," she says. What's more, they're educated, making it possible for them to gain employment elsewhere, if needed. "We did not see that even 15 years ago."

Many also mention the rise in older women choosing farming as a second career. For these women, farming may be part-time and focused on niche markets or organic growing. "They're talking about going into llamas and alpacas and stuff like that. These are women that aren't from farms and they're really interested in that sort of thing, which just blows my mind," Lori Chamberlain says. "I think it's really great. It's not just milking cows any more."

Moreover, women are not only choosing farming as a profession, they're educating themselves about agriculture, although questions arise about whether the numbers doing so are growing or have peaked. Cathy McKay, who obtained a master's degree in plant pathology at the University of Guelph in 1975, says women formed just 10 per cent of her class. Today, she estimates that percentage is probably above 50 per cent. Kristin
Ego MacPhail graduated from the University of Guelph with a degree in agriculture in 1995. She recalls equal numbers of women and men in her classes.

Trudy Reid, 29, however, estimates that there were about 12 girls in a class of 40-50 when she attended Kemptville College. Of those, about half either went into farming on their own or married farmers, she says. Reid runs a 60-head beef cattle operation with her husband, Jason, near Thunder Bay.

Jenna Kippen, 22, who is building a short-horn milk herd on her family's beef farm near Schoenberg, says when she graduated from Kemptville in 2006 there were about six women graduates. All of them are working in production agriculture, either on their home farm or on another farm, she says.

Independence the key
So what's attracting women to farming? Many refer to a lifestyle that presents an opportunity to be home with their children, an affinity for the outdoors, work that is flexible enough to be organized around the demands of family life or other work.

Independence is key. "When I make a decision, I can weigh the various pros and cons and make the decision. I don't have to wait for someone else to make it for me," explains McKay.

Noting that income from farming is typically less than other professions, Murray wonders if women "are more comfortable making do with a smaller income and doing something they really enjoy than a man traditionally would."

When it comes to what skills women bring to the job, managing human resources, problem solving, critical thinking, organization, planning ahead, managing and handling finances are mentioned. Animal husbandry and marketing talents are others. Many link their skill with animals to their experiences with children and as caregivers.

As for women's strength in agri-marketing: "We think of ways that the consumer will take it because we are the consumer. We do the grocery shopping; we know what we buy," points out Halstead.

In many cases, marketing skills go back to who is doing the finances and the bookkeeping, observes Lammens. Most of the women interviewed said that they acted as the farm's bookkeepers. "We kind of have an idea of how (a venture) might pan out financially," she says.

Sitting at her kitchen table where she can keep an eye on the door to the feed business, its warehouse, and the farm's driveway through a large patio window, Uher observes that many of the skills women bring to the farm were initially honed within conventional roles that required juggling the care of children and other family members with running the household, helping on the farm and even working off-farm.

Women's role as tradition's gatekeepers, facilitating exchanges between generations and within communities, has also taught women to consider a business decision's larger implications, she says. Decisions are made not only with finances in mind but also the demands of life, family and community. "I think we bring a lot of heart to the business," she says. 

Carolynne Griffith, 66, a Lambton County egg producer and cash cropper who farmed with her late husband, Arthur, and continues with her son, John, points out that in her generation, food preparation was a priority for most farm women. "That was our job," she says. But family meals were also a "celebration of food," and that love affair has spilled over into "how we see the whole food system. When I think of agriculture, I think of food production."

In turn, that perception has inspired keen interest in issues of food safety and food sovereignty. This interest has been a factor in her involvement in her commodity organization, she says. Griffith is chair of Egg Farmers of Ontario and president of FarmGate5, a provincial coalition promoting supply management.

Halstead says that she has used her interest in food safety to identify with her customers. She transforms it into selling points – maintaining a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points system and other food security measures, exploring the possibility of growing vegetables in the United States to provide clients with year-round products produced to Canadian standards, and introducing an organic line of products.

Chamberlain's particular field of interest is her farm's herd, descendants from her father and grandfather's herds. Homebred herds are important, she says. "You know their family lines and their pedigrees; they're something you've developed."

For her part, Norma Winters says that she's keenly interested in the promotion of locally-grown products and recently took part in a major event in her area highlighting local foods.

Childcare challenge
An interest in the entire food production chain also seems to be another common theme, with many women engaged in value-added ventures on their farms or involved in other aspects of the food industry. For example, Kristin Ego MacPhail, 35, who is involved in a nursery and greenhouse operation with her husband, Gary, and her family's farm market near Coldwater, north of Barrie, talks about the satisfaction in producing a plant or product and seeing it through to the customer. And Kate Wilman emphasizes the advantages of adding processing to their operation.

It has meant being able to keep the size of the dairy herd smaller and enabled the family to maintain its quality of life.

Despite the gains, challenges remain. Childcare is one. While the federal government has introduced a childcare tax credit, rural areas still need an improved infrastructure, Crews says. There's a need to put supports in place to help women make the transition from being at home raising children to resuming their farm careers, adds Lunn.

And there's still work to be done in fostering acceptance of women farmers within the broader community. Images of women farmers are virtually non-existent in literature. "It's kind of sad," says Ego MacPhail, noting that her two-and-a-half year old daughter has nothing to help her put her mother's farm involvement into context. It also conveys the impression that farming doesn't hold opportunity for women, she says.

McKay talks about how people often don't understand that she, like many of her male counterparts in farming, couldn't be available for events in the busy summer months. "People just assumed I was home."

Gaining recognition for your skills and credibility is still harder if you're a woman than for a man, says Uher. But things are improving and the world is changing. "I think women finally have the confidence to feel that they can succeed in agriculture," she says. "It takes a different degree of skill to be successful in agriculture right now and I think women have that in terms of being good managers and hard workers." 

And by the way, some things will likely never change. Of the women interviewed who had children, nearly all counted them among their greatest successes. BF