Voices for Agriculture: Ruth Hambleton

Ruth Hambleton's passion to strengthen agricultural education for women has long roots. Her mother, Annette (Annie) Kohlhagen Fleck, successfully helped manage the family's northern-Illinois family farm at a time when the industry was traditionally male dominated.

In Hambleton's own career as a University of Illinois educator, she noticed the tools women need to become successful partners or sole proprietors in agricultural business were lacking. Using her mother's experiences as a guidepost, she developed a curriculum that includes financial skills, estate planning, lease negotiations, marketing, human resource management and more.

Annie's Project, named for her mother, started with 10 women attending a six-week workshop in 2003 in Centralia, Illinois. Since then, more than 22,000 women (and some men) have found value in the program that is now in 40 states and several countries -- and is still growing. Hambleton continues to serve on the Annie's Project Board of Directors, as new leadership guides future programming.

"We're getting the next generation ready for the next 20 years and on their terms using their technology, but mixing in our own socialization. That's what I see as my role as we transition between the way we did things in the '50s and the way we're going to do things in 2050," she says.

What cements the learning is the foundation of networking that forever links participants, who also tend to become lifelong learners, Hambleton says.

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-- https://anniesproject.org/…

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