There is much about the family farm that has remained steadfastly constant through the years. The risks involved in farming, adoption of innovative methods and tools to boost productivity, and the pride of multigenerational land ownership have all stood the test of time and set the nation’s agriculture producers apart as an enduring symbol of American grit and fortitude.
In other, equally significant ways, the profile of the American farmer is changing, starting with who is in the tractor driver’s seat. According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, women represented nearly 40 percent of the nation’s producers at more than 1.2 million farmers and ranchers in all.
For anyone who has spent any time in the nation’s rural reaches, such statistics are something of a misnomer. Women have always played a vital role in the country’s agricultural industry, working alongside their fathers, husbands and brothers in ways that put the “family” in “family farm.”
However, it is only in recent years that women have begun to assert themselves as the holder of the deed, the signature on the farm loan and the name on the check come market time. The USDA report noted nearly 6 in 10 farms in the United States have a female producer, accounting for 41 percent of ag sales, or $222 billion, and almost half of the nation’s 534 million acres of farmland, owned or rented.
With those numbers comes greater decision-making authority. The census found women outnumber men in the percentage primarily responsible for record keeping and financial management decisions, and the sexes are dead even when it comes to who handles estate and succession planning. While the percentage of men still dominate decision making regarding day-to-day land use/crops and marketing of the farm, women are just five percentage points behind in decisions regarding livestock.
Arkansas Money & Politics reached out to three Arkansas producers who embody that new independence and autonomy to learn a little bit about how they stayed on the land where so many moved off, never to return. The trio represent three very different approaches, but all shared the same commitment to the ground and the lifestyle that raised them and which they hope will one day pass on to their own children.
• Jill Edwards, Faulkner County, Cattle, row crops
• Elizabeth Walker, Sevier County, Cattle, poultry, goats
• Timothea “Tia” Broderick, Sebastian County, Dairy Cattle, sheep, hogs
