May 20, 2003 Tuesday

Down on the Farm, An Up Trend for Women; Female-Run Operations Are Rare Growth Area

Pamela Ferdinand, Special to The Washington Post

GILMANTON IRON WORKS, N.H.

It started with a lonely horse named Cookie.

Valerie Davies, Cookie's owner, bought a goat to keep the mare company. Then another, then another. Nine years later, Davies is milking 40 goats, birthing dozens of kids, and producing delicately seasoned cheese for specialty shops and restaurants throughout New England.

"I really loved the goats, and I wanted to keep them and find a way to support them," said Davies, 41, a mother of 10 who has outfitted part of her home with a licensed Grade A dairy and cheese processing facility. "I've always said this is what I was born to do. I don't mind digging stalls out by hand."

From Davies's niche goat cheese enterprise to organic dairy farms in Vermont, sprawling cattle ranches in Nebraska and pecan orchards in New Mexico, American women are taking charge of the land like never before.

At a time when the number of farms -- and male-operated farms, specifically -- is dramatically declining, farms operated by women are one of the few growth trends in agriculture, according to federal statistics and national farm experts.

Women are the largest and fastest-growing group of small farm buyers, and some federal agricultural experts predict that a majority of U.S. farmland will be owned, and many of those farms will be operated, by women within the next two decades.

The reasons are varied. Farm wives, who have been increasingly involved in day-to-day decisions about land, crops, livestock and equipment in recent decades, are outliving husbands and assuming their duties in the fields and barns. Some women are inheriting farms from parents, while others are retiring from established careers to purchase land and attend classes on everything from sheep shearing to tractor maintenance in pursuit of dreams of rural independence. Statistics show most are in their late fifties or older.

"We're seeing more and more women," said Terry Gilbert, who chairs the American Farm Bureau's Women's Committee. "Sometimes the man on the farm has either left because of divorce or he is working off the farm in a job that pays insurance benefits. So in a lot of cases, the woman has stepped into that position to run the farm."

Vivianne Holmes, director of the Women's Agricultural Network in Lisbon Falls, Maine, said modern women see farming as something they can and want to do.

"If you look back in farm history, women were the gatherers and the farmers," she said. "Now, when we ask women why they are farmers, it's because they like to be in touch with the land. They want to know where their food is coming from. They are stewards, and it fills something in them that they want to reclaim."

The number of U.S. women in agriculture -- about half of whom earn the bulk of their income from their farms -- steadily rose to more than 165,000 in 1997, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That figure is expected to dramatically increase when the 2002 agricultural census is released early next year and identifies more than one person as a primary farm operator for the first time. In contrast, the number of full-time male farm operators decreased to 886,000 from nearly 1 million during the five-year period ending in 1997.

Linda Andersen inherited her 5,000-acre ranch in Nebraska's Sand Hills when her only brother wasn't interested and her marriage ended. With her daughter, Andersen, 52, runs a 350-head Red Angus purebred operation on land homesteaded by her grandfather in 1915. The days are long, and the work hard, but it never crossed her mind to sell.

"This is what I want to do. This is what I know," said Andersen, whose cattle have won national prizes. "As you need to learn how to do something, you learn how to do it and go ahead."

Paulina Salopek took over the family farm in New Mexico after her husband died in 1979. She operates a 1,000-acre pecan orchard about 45 miles north of El Paso with her son, and had to learn just about everything from scratch.

"My husband took care of everything, and I found out after I lost him I knew very little," said Salopek. "I didn't have the slightest idea how you ordered water to irrigate the farm. I had never been to the bank or the attorneys with my husband, so those were kind of frightening experiences."

She attended a management seminar at Texas A&M University and went on to double the farm's acreage and build a multimillion-dollar business. Salopek, who says she was once known in her community only as "David's wife," was elected the first female president of both the regional and national Pecan Growers Association.

Most farms operated by women are smaller than 70 acres and a 2001 federal survey showed that most of the women earn less than male farmers. Women also prefer to sell directly to consumers and are more likely to branch out into alternative forms of agriculture, such as organic farming.

New England has more female farmers per state than any other region in the country, partly because of a profusion of small farms and the appeal of its strong alternative agriculture market. New Hampshire has the largest percentage of female farmers in the country, at 17.6 percent, with 517 female-operated farms in 1997, up from 402 in 1992. In neighboring Vermont, where most dairy farms have 100 cows or fewer, farms run by women represented 13.4 percent of all farms in the state.

In Vermont, female state legislators are chairing the House and Senate agricultural committees for the first time, and state officials recently launched the Vermont Farm Women's Fund to help raise the profile of female farmers and provide financial assistance and educational support.

Despite such assistance, many women cite difficulty obtaining bank loans and labor, dealing with repairs, which can be costly, and knowing where to go for advice. Others complain that most farm equipment and clothing is sized for men ("We have hips, they don't," one said). Some women also say they need to adapt equipment or rely on neighbors and friends to help lift hay bales and hook up tractor gear.

And others complain many male farmers see them only as "hobby farmers."

Lisa Kaiman, 36, who owns Jersey Girls Dairy in Chester, Vt., said she has to be a little tough sometimes to be taken seriously, especially given her stature -- 5 feet, 90 pounds -- and her unconventional technique of allowing cows to sleep, stretched out, without stalls.

"I've had hay dealers whom I know were thinking, 'I could take this chick,' but they learn fast, and word gets around that you're not going to be taken," she said. "You get a reputation that you can be a real you-know-what."

Nor does the rigor of farming lend itself to a lively social life, say many of these women. One study showed that half of female farmers are married, compared with 90 percent of male farmers.

Brenda Mihaliak, 30, is the first female manager and herdsman on her family's farm in Willington, Conn., and chairs the Connecticut Farm Bureau's Young Farmer and Rancher Committee, whose membership is majority female. She wakes up every morning before 3 a.m. to tend to 275 cows, and another 25 calves are due in July. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time or opportunity for meeting Mr. Right.

"The family life that agriculture provides is one that I cherish, and I wouldn't want to say it's better than something else because I've never experienced anything else," she said. But, she added, "you don't meet a lot of guys under the age of 60 on a dairy farm."