Having more women involved in agriculture is associated with better community well-being, according to researchers at Penn State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A new comprehensive quantitative study (published in the January 2024 Applied Economics and Perspectives Journal) found that U.S. counties with a higher share of farms owned or operated by women have higher rates of nonfarm entrepreneurship, longer life expectancies and lower poverty rates, leading to better overall community well-being for all who reside in those counties.
Women farmers approach their operations in ways that positively impact their communities, according to the researchers.
“We know from previous qualitative research that women farmers tend to enter into farming for different reasons than men and often make decisions with the greater good in mind,” said Claudia Schmidt, assistant professor of marketing and local/regional food systems at Penn State University and the study’s lead author. “For example, they strive to meet a social need in their community or they prioritize environmental stewardship over profits. Our study is the first to use quantitative research methods to explore whether this concept of ‘civic agriculture’ actually translates to improved community well-being in places with higher shares of women farmers.”
Using U.S. county-level data from the most recent U.S. Census and the Census of Agriculture, the researchers conducted a series of analyses to model the independent effect of women farmers on three local economic variables: the poverty rate, average life expectancy and the rate of new business formation. The researchers chose these measures to approximate a community’s quality of life. For example, the rate of new business formation relates to the entrepreneurial energy in a community, which is a good indicator of economic health, said co-author Steve Deller, Vilas
Distinguished Achievement Professor and Community Development Extension Specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Communities with more people starting businesses tend to be more dynamic and resilient to shocks, thus enhancing community well-being,” Deller said. “Similarly, a county with less poverty, and where people tend to have longer lifespans, is likely to be a better place to live than a county with higher poverty rates and shorter lifespans.”
The authors of the study also controlled for the possibility that their findings could be attributed to other community factors, such as the racial composition, the number of single-parent households and the number of college graduates.
The researchers also found that the positive association with women farmers spilled over into neighboring counties, meaning that more women farmers in one county was associated with greater community well-being in neighboring counties, too.
“The fact that these spillovers exist suggests having a critical mass of female farmers within a larger region, and not just within a county, has an even greater impact on regional well-being,” said co-author Stephan Goetz, professor of agricultural economics and regional economics at Penn State and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development.
Although the findings do not establish causality, they warrant a closer look by policy makers concerned with rural poverty and well-being, according to the researchers.
“Anything that can help reduce rural poverty is worth looking at more closely,” Goetz said. “Even though women farmers tend to be less profit-driven and operate smaller farms than their male counterparts, our findings suggest that having more of them is good for a community.”
The number of farms operated by women has increased over the past 20 years, according to Schmidt and other sources.
Women now represent nearly 30% of all farmers nationally, according to the recent USDA Census of Agriculture. That percentage is even higher in California, where according to the USDA Census of Agriculture nearly 40% of all farmers are women.
Additionally, the percentage of women in agriculture will only continue to increase over the coming years because females are far outpacing males when it comes to seeking degrees in agriculture, as well as in participation in organizations like FFA.
For example, 79% of the students who earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture-related majors in the 2020-21 academic year at the University of California, Davis, were women, with only 21% of graduates being men, according to researcher College Factual. When it comes to Masters Degrees at U.C. Davis, which is the leading agriculture university in California and the U.S., women took home 57% of the degrees in the 2021-2021 academic year and men 43%.
Other agricultural colleges and Universities in California and nationally report a trend similar to the U.C. Davis percentages. Women are clearly studying and getting degrees in agriculture in far greater numbers than men are. This trend also tracks with the rise in the number of women majoring in Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields and establishing careers in the physical and life sciences, which include agriculture.
Female membership in FFA (Future Farmers of America), the premier agricultural organization for young people, also has increased dramatically over the last few years. For example, currently about 73% of all members of California FFA are women.
“Along with more women participating in agriculture than we’ve seen historically, we’re also beginning to see more research investigating their role and impact in the United States,” Schmidt said, noting that the trend is timely, especially given that the most recent Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded for research on the previously unrecognized positive role of women in the general economy.
Here in California, the nation’s leading farm state and where more women are involved in agriculture than is the case nationally, women farmers have been playing a growing and significant role in uniquely improving community well-being, such as working to secure food security, over the last few years, including during the pandemic shutdown and the wildfires that devastated parts of the state.
The majority of farmers in America are still men. But the average age of those male farmers is around 60 and many are or soon will be retiring from farming. Therefore, generationally and demographically, the future face of farming is most likely going to be as much or more female than it’s going to be male. We should embrace it because not only will it be good for business, it also will also be good for our communities.
My Job Depends on Ag Magazine columnist and contributing editor Victor Martino is an agrifood industry consultant, entrepreneur and writer. One of his passions and current projects is working with farmers who want to develop their own branded food products. You can contact him at: victormartino415@gmail.com.
