More women plow into farming

Census: 13.7% of U.S. operations in ’12 run by fairer sex

Geneice McCall says being a woman in agriculture isn’t easy. “Women, in general, are faced with the stigma — you’re a girl, you can’t do this.”
Geneice McCall says being a woman in agriculture isn’t easy. “Women, in general, are faced with the stigma — you’re a girl, you can’t do this.”

In a predominately male driven field, women are making a name for themselves.

Geneice McCall has been a rancher her entire life. She was raised on a farm and assisted her father every day with tasks. When she married, it was to a rancher.

When her husband became unable to work, she took over their Carroll County farm without a second thought, and today, she is the sole reason it still exists.

Women have always had roles on the farm, but traditionally they were supportive ones. Today more than 280,000 farms in the U.S. have women as the principal operators handling the day to-day operations.

“Women, in general, are faced with the stigma - you’re a girl, you can’t do this,” said McCall, 63, who is the president of the Arkansas Cattlewomen’s Association and serves on the board of the Carroll County Farm Service Agency. “It’s not as hard as it used to be - women are getting more respect.”

The U.S. Department of Agricultural’s 2012 Census of Agriculture, released Thursday, showed that 13.7 percent of U.S. farms are operated by women, up from 5.2 percent in 1978 when the USDA began tracking those statistics.

Nationally, farming operations shrank between 2007-12, census figures show. In that five-year period, the number of farms shrank by 4.5 percent, from 2.2 million to 2.1 million. Meanwhile, the overall number of farming operations in Arkansas dropped 8.7 percent, from 49,346 to 45,072, in the same period.

As part of that trend, the number of farms operated by women in Arkansas declined by 13.4 percent, from 6,331 to 5,485 between 2007 and 2012, according to the agricultural census. Nationally, the census shows that farms with women as principal operators shrank by 17,940, or 5.8 percent, to 288,269 from 2007-12.

Acceptance by their male counterparts has been decades in coming for women, but it seems that the hard work is starting to bear fruit. But, McCall said, the acceptance is coming from a new generation.

“The older generations now are getting older, they’ve retired or died off, and the younger generation of people understand that women are more capable than they used to be,” she said.

But it’s not an easy line of work.

When a women inherits a farm or shifts into the agriculture field, she faces numerous challenges and unfamiliar responsibilities.

Jessica Hamilton, 31, has been interested in agriculture for as long as she can remember. She was raised on 2,500 acres in Logan County, where she tended to crops and cared for livestock with her parents and brother.

When her father died in 2003, he left the farm to her, her mother and brother. Together, they carried on with what her father worked so hard to create. But, when she bought her brother’s share of the farm, she noticed a perception shift among the men in the community.

She was constantly defending the decisions she made on her farm. “Trust me, it was a headache,” she said.

“Now, I’ve been in it so long that they no longer give me a hard time. I mean there are a couple [of men] in town who poke fun and still tell me things aren’t a smart move,but it’s none of their business.”

Her uncle, Harry Willems, who is the women’s program coordinator for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said that early on Hamilton was constantly having to prove herself to the men, but the day came when they began to leave her alone.

“She had to prove herself, not once, but several times,and she’s earned her stripes,” he said.

On average, women ranchers and farmers are more educated then the men in the same field. About 61 percent have educations beyond high school, compared with 47 percent of men, according the 2007 census. The 2012 numbers are not yet available.

More women undertake secondary educations because education provides more opportunities and is a big-picture investment. Hamilton, for instance, is nine hours from completing her undergraduate degree in crop management.

Patricia Holiman, 43, inherited 87 acres 25 years ago, and despite her long-term involvement in ranching, she said she still isn’t taken seriously by men in her community.

The land she inherited has been in her family since the 1800s, and ranching was bred into her, like it is for many of her male counterparts.

She is vice president of the Arkansas Cattlewomen’s Association and serves on the fair board in Yell County, but she still catches grief when she goes to town to pick up supplies.

“When you go to the feed store, they think you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Men don’t think you know the health of the animal. I can tell my husband when a cow is going to have a calf just by looking at it, but they think I might not know.”

“Women are studying the mechanics, and they know what needs to be done,” said McCall, who works alongside Holiman. “They can ride tractors, bush hogs, and can bale hay and load cows - women are learning that they can do all of this and that they are unstoppable.”

And the U.S. government now provides avenues for women to serve in their chosen field, whether it be through their local farm agency or in community education.

“The women and the government are shaping the agri-world, special concessions are being made for women farmer’s, new programs are coming out to help women, and a special task force will look into farm loan reconsideration” for women who believe they are treated unfairly, McCall said.

“Things are changing,” she said.

Business, Pages 69 on 02/23/2014

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