Women Have Always Been Farmers

“We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.” – Vandana Shiva

Women Have Always Been Farmers

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Narration by Kristina Villa

Out of Balance

It may seem like the disharmony in our world today is created through a chaotic multitude of causes that would be impossible to sort through, narrow in on, and change. The truth is most of the world’s problems coil out of just a few significant roots that have dug deeply into our social and economic structures. One of the most noxious of these destabilizing themes is the global oppression of women.

While many, even today, would argue that sexism is a naturally occurring phenomenon stemming from the dominant nature of men, evidence suggests that women lost their freedom when societies developed private property. Frederick Engels outlined in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State that women’s oppression was caused by the birth of class society. When the human population went from communal, nomadic societies to settlers dividing up agricultural lands, men became landowners and women became private property. Relegated to the roles of the caretaker and mother, women were removed from positions of leadership, their labor became devalued and exploited, and their primary value came from birthing more laborers.

The only thing as powerful and important as women’s ability to create life, is their innate ability to steward it.

Even as strides have been made for women’s rights over decades, of the 1.5 billion people living on Earth surviving on a dollar or less a day, the majority are women. The gap between men and women in poverty globally continues to rise, a phenomenon known as the feminization of poverty. On average, women make 24 percent less than men for comparable work, they make up about 66 percent of the world’s illiterate population, and they are underrepresented at all levels of executive decision-making in government worldwide. At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years. 

The oppression of women may feel like just one social issue, but it is a powerful force at work in our world that touches everything. The historic and present-day objectification of women and girls has taken away their agency, subjugated their beneficial influence in our societies, and has resulted directly in a destabilized world. 

At The Farmers Land Trust, we believe there is a deep-seeded knowing within us that the liberation of the land is inextricably linked to the liberation of women. We believe that giving women power would give planet Earth back her voice.

In Need of Empathy

Maintaining the idea that women can’t be skilled laborers, experts, or leaders helps preserve the status quo of patriarchy. It’s no secret that women have excelled in trades, in academia, business, science, and in governance, often for less money and with much more scrutiny. Even when women have the same capabilities or credentials as men, they are not taken seriously and are additionally leaned on for their societally enforced free domestic labor and “soft skills.”

Robin Verson and Madeline Bela of Hill and Hollow Farm

Whether women choose to (or can) be mothers or not, many will assume the responsibility of the caregiver or nurturer in their lives in some way. Through taking the lead in caring for injured or aging family members or through the management of men’s feelings at the corporate office, they will be called upon to use their intuitive nature and empathy in support of others. This underlines the obvious value of women’s perspectives in our societies while also highlighting the gender disparity that keeps women from obtaining and maintaining positions of power.

To see these aspects of the feminine awakened at the level of global governance would change our world. For now, women are quietly mending our fraying social structures and ecosystems from the background. To fully divest from our male-dominant, war-obsessed, dominion-over ideology, we must learn from women and cultivate empathy for all living things. We must all carry a maternal instinct to not only protect our planted seeds and young but to establish and maintain safe environments that allow us to nurture them into maturity.

A Safe Place for Women

Viewing women as material possessions that can be acquired not only creates inequities in our societies and imbalances in our ecological world, but it also endangers women. The truth is, women need to be protected, sometimes even from the ones they love. In 2018, the World Health Organization, on behalf of the UN interagency working group on violence against women, found that one in three women have experienced physical or sexual abuse. Globally, as many as 38 percent of women who are murdered are killed by their intimate partners. Abuses against women are carried out at home, in public, and even in the workplace where 34 percent of women have reported being sexually harassed by a colleague. This can contribute to economic dependence on men as women are forced to leave well-paying positions early or even miss out on promotion opportunities if they try to avoid their abuser or choose to speak up.

Women live an average of five years longer than men and this fact makes women an essential part of preserving farms and farmland transitions.

The challenges faced by women who are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are all too familiar for Annie Warmke, founder of Blue Rock Station Farm located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in southeastern Ohio. In 1980, Annie found herself in a women’s shelter after fleeing with her child from their home. It was the 22nd time Annie had left her abusive partner and she was determined that this would be the last. She began volunteering at the shelter on Saturday evenings and came across a copy of women’s rights activist Del Martin’s seminal book Battered Wives. Annie remembers pouring over the pages and while there was a lot of essential information about the historic treatment of women, the inequities within the construct of marriage, and the limited legal rights of women, she was mostly struck by the included stories of women who were victims of physical and sexual abuse. In their stories, she saw herself. Annie remembers, “At that moment, I made this promise to myself. I didn’t care where I must go, or what I had to do, I was going to make the world a different place for women and their families.”

Women are innately suited for taking care of the land due to the embedded skills of the caregiver and nurturer; almost as though being lumped into the category of raw materials has given them a richer understanding of the true preciousness of natural resources.

It is so often in our human experience that our true calling reveals itself to us when we are struggling to break free from our deepest shadow, the seed germinating best in the dark. Annie meant what she said and from that moment on would spend her life speaking up for women and celebrating their strengths. She would take her activism a step further by building a safe haven for all at the 38.2-acre farm she later bought with her supportive and loving husband Jay in 1993. 

Annie and Jay purchased the land in hopes of building a retreat for their family and to create something that had the power to inspire and uplift the local community of Philo, Ohio. Blue Rock Station Farm was Annie’s vision, a place where naturally raised livestock and crops flourished and where all buildings were treated as sustainably created, reclaimed art. Annie led a mostly male crew in building the first Earthship east of the Mississippi River which has inspired countless visitors. Today, the farm boasts many unique, sustainable buildings including straw bale barns, cabins and outbuildings, a recycled plastic bottle greenhouse, a solar shower, and much more. Over the last 32 years, the farm has offered workshops and on-farm events, has housed and educated over 100 interns, has supported the release of books on natural goat farming and solar power and has given Annie and Jay endless insight that they now share on a weekly podcast. Throughout the years, it has remained a safe place for people and animals alike.

Build a New Table

Annie has been a leader in agriculture in a rural setting for decades—a difficult path that is riddled with challenges. Before bringing her dreams into reality at Blue Rock Station, Annie had been farming with her former husband and experienced firsthand the gender disparity present in agriculture. Annie recalls, “When I started farming, I was considered the farmer’s wife, so even though I was actively farming, I was not in a position of power. No woman at that time would have considered herself a farmer. Even though we ran the business, kept the books, butchered the meat, hatched the chicks, milked the cows, and took care of so many details and activities. We did it all. It wasn’t until 2017 that the USDA added an additional line to count the primary managers and operators of the farms in the Agricultural Census and women actually started to be counted.”

She has built something miraculous in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains that will now outlive her physical body as her spirit is carried on through new hands into our green future.

Later, when Annie became the primary operator of her own farm at Blue Rock Station, she made it a priority to connect with and support other women farmers in her region. She organized farm tours where aspiring women farmers and consumers alike could explore woman-owned operations, she created a group called Women Grow Ohio, hosted a conference series, and stood up for women’s rights on her local Farm Service Committee. When starting the farm tours, Annie noted, “Some of the interested women farmers would reach back out and say they couldn’t participate because their husband said they had nothing to share. I would always ask, ‘Well, what is it you do, exactly?’ and they would give me this list that no human could possibly do. I’d ask, ‘That’s not enough?’ and they would start to cry.”

Photo courtesy of Mother Earth News

Throughout her farming career, she faced sexism in all of its insidious forms. She wasn’t taken seriously and wasn’t believed when she presented herself as the head farmer. Standing in her power in meetings with community members or government agencies where women’s voices often went unheard made the men involved angry. Our societal prioritization of men and men’s feelings has made it very difficult for women like Annie to center their needs. Women are not only supposed to occupy the role of humble sidekick, but they are also supposed to be pleasing in how they dress, how they speak, and what they say. Women are not allowed to upset or offend. Women are not allowed to speak their truth if it will make men uncomfortable.

Women are still cautious about claiming their power, especially in a historically male-dominated sector like agriculture.

Annie asserts, “Women don’t make the rules. We waste our incredible energy, vision, and caring by thinking that if we are just nice enough and stay in our place, we will catch favor from the people at the top of the power pyramid. Waiting for them to change doesn’t work. You must take your power. There is a thread that runs through everything that is a result of women not being in leadership roles. So many parts of our society are broken and cannot be fixed until women are given a voice. We have to build our own table, even if society doesn’t want us to.”

Women in Agriculture

If women were able to speak their full truth, we would find that they have always been farmers. They have carried the work of the land forward and held a quiet and essential presence on homesteads and farms all over the world since the first agrarian societies came to be.

Even as the rights of women have increased in certain places, women are still cautious about claiming their power, especially in a historically male-dominated sector like agriculture. When the gamut of possibilities for negative encounters with men runs from microaggressions and inequity all the way to violence and abuse, women take on more than the usual amount of risk when starting a farm business. While it may seem like an uphill battle, women are speaking up and claiming their roles in farming and the benefits are already spreading.

Our societal prioritization of men and men’s feelings has made it very difficult for women like Annie to center their needs. Women are not allowed to speak their truth if it will make men uncomfortable.

When it comes to women owning and managing the land, a growing trend reveals that women often farm on smaller acreage, use regenerative practices, and prioritize the production of food over commodity crops. There is great wisdom held in the roles of women in society, and it translates directly to how they tend the land. Women are innately suited for taking care of the land due to the embedded skills of the caregiver and nurturer; almost as though being lumped into the category of raw materials has given them a richer understanding of the true preciousness of natural resources. Women have always offered their skills and labor for the important work that follows a planted seed, and many women have a deep connection to dynamic systems and the potential harmony that can be offered by a well-cared-for, diverse, and thriving natural world.

Fortunately, many organizations see this incredible gift being offered up to the collective and are rising to meet the needs of women who are using their farms as safe havens for communities and ecologies across the United States. The Women Food and Agriculture Network, founded and directed by farmer and women rights activist Denise O’Brien in 1997, has created a safe space for women to seek empowerment in agriculture, and their work keeps growing. Today the organization facilitates farmer-to-farmer mentoring opportunities, offers language access programs, engages in advocacy work including a focus on getting women elected into public office, and works directly with women landowners to advance stewardship and cultivate a community of conservation champions through their Women Caring for the Land project.

Caretaking the Land

Even on farms where women farmers are growing crops and raising livestock alongside male partners, women often inherit ownership of properties at the time of their partner’s death. In the United States, women live an average of five years longer than men and this fact makes women an essential part of preserving farms and farmland transitions. This reality mixed with women’s tendency to champion conservation and use regenerative growing modalities makes landowning women important allies in our work at The Farmers Land Trust. Women who find themselves inheriting land at the end of their partner’s life are once again in a position where they must teach themselves the path forward. This can be daunting but is an experience many women in agriculture have their entire growing journeys; women must teach themselves many skills (such as mechanics, carpentry, machinery repair, etc.) that are commonly taught to young men and are categorically not taught to young girls. 

It is so often in our human experience that our true calling reveals itself to us when we are struggling to break free from our deepest shadow, the seed germinating best in the dark.

The Appalachian Resource Conservation & Development Council is working to support women in this situation through a workshop series Women Preserving Farmland for the Future. The workshop is an attempt to build a community of women farmers and women landowners while addressing some of the unique challenges associated with the lack of training and preparation women are given when it comes to asset and property ownership. This affordable, six-part series hopes to empower women to start the conversation about their land succession plans with local professionals, legal advisors, and their families.

Unlocking Our Green Future

As Annie Warmke prepares to leave the work of Blue Rock Station Farm to the next generation, she feels both joy and grief. “I am reinventing myself again. I’ve done it many times. I feel inspired by it while also feeling deep sadness for the time I will spend away from the farm. When you walk around the farm, you are looking at my brain.

Every system came from me. Even as thousands of hands have been involved in the buildings and in the farming, my vision is what has created and sustained it all.” Annie’s life and farm are exemplary examples of the incredible gifts women bring into our world and into agriculture when they are able to lead. She has built something miraculous in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains that will now outlive her physical body as her spirit is carried on through new hands into our green future.

Meanwhile, as misogyny slowly loosens its grip on the philosophies and sciences of today, we are collectively opening up to new paradigms and much is being revealed about the true roles and value of females in the organization and social order of human and animal communities. A new study about menopause, a phenomenon that occurs in humans and toothed whales, suggests that the cessation of fertility in females within social groups is a preservation tactic that benefits all. 

For now, women are quietly mending our fraying social structures and ecosystems from the background. 

The study, focusing on orca whales, found that menopause ensured that females within the groups lived into their elder years, offering their deep wisdom, nurturing, and protection to the group. The females of this large-brained species have not only evolved to live longer than the males, but also to lose their reproductive abilities halfway through their lives, saving them from the potential dangers of birth, allowing them to fully embody their roles as educators, guides, and grandmothers within the social order. Menopause as an evolutionary, biological component of women shows us that the only thing as powerful and important as women’s ability to create life, is their innate ability to steward it.

Liberation of the land is inextricably linked to the liberation of women. We believe that giving women power would give planet Earth back her voice.

Here at The Farmers Land Trust, we honor the legacy of women in agriculture, we applaud their regenerative land practices, we respect their natural capacity for the stewardship of living things and living systems, and we intend to uplift their wishes at the difficult time of farmland succession. We are grateful for the ways women’s wisdom has guided us as a society in vastly under-celebrated ways, allowing for the creation and maintenance of some of our most harmonious and equity-rich systems and organizations. If you are a woman-identified farmer or landowner or would like to support someone inspiring in your life or community, please reach out to us today.