Our Rural Roots

Jennifer Campbell, Contributor

This year has been designated as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, and that has given me pause to think about what that means to me.

Women have always farmed.

Long before social media, women planted, harvested, fed livestock, kept records, made decisions, fetched parts, fixed equipment and shuffled people from field to field. Most likely they never gave much thought to what title belonged beside their name.

They simply did the work.

I say all of this as someone who posts frequently on social media about farming.

I love the work. It invigorates me. There is satisfaction in finishing a field, solving a problem, caring for cattle or ending the day knowing I contributed to a business I am part of. Sometimes, that makes me want to take a picture and share it.

But for me, the satisfaction has never come from being a woman farming. It comes from doing work I enjoy and doing it well. Maybe my hesitation with the label is that we rarely put a gender designation in front of other occupations. A farmer can simply be a farmer, just as a teacher, accountant, veterinarian or business owner needs no explanation of whether they are a man or a woman.

Maybe celebrating women in agriculture matters. For generations, women have contributed significantly on farms and across the ag industry without always being recognized as equal contributors. Agriculture has also had its share of male chauvinism. Around the world, women still face real barriers to land ownership, financing, education and opportunity.

Maybe this special year isn't about celebrating something new and more about recognizing something that has always been there.

Women farm. They always have.

And, maybe the greatest progress will be when a woman doing farm work is simply part of agriculture, exactly where we've always been.

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-- Jennifer (Jent) Campbell farms, writes about agriculture and tends crops and livestock from a seven-generation Indiana family farm. Follow her on X @plowwife. Find her Farm Wife Feeds blog at https://www.farmwifefeeds.com/…

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