Editorial: For women in agriculture, opportunities abound

Glacier FarmMedia – I can’t remember when I first heard the song “I am woman” by Helen Reddy, but it was in the basement of my parents’ house, where I would play my mom’s old 45s on a portable record player she’d had since her teens.

I remember liking the singer’s voice but didn’t really understand the song. I asked my mom why she was singing about women roaring. As far as I knew, only lions roared.

Mom tried to explain the woman’s rights movement and feminism, but I was still puzzled.

Unlike my mom and her mother before her, I was fortunate to grow up in a time when I was not told or made to feel I couldn’t do certain things because I was a girl. It never occurred to me that some things could be off limits because of gender.

I’ve never felt that I shouldn’t or couldn’t attempt a particular sport, school subject, job or activity. My parents encouraged my sister and I to do well in school, find what interested us and try our best.

We benefitted from the equality struggles of previous generations.

My mother worked, as did most moms and other women I knew at the time. Some worked part-time, some had full-time or professional careers. Some worked with their husbands or partners in the family business.

Later I realized the struggles for equality fought by generations before me were only the beginning. In my youth, few working women owned or ran a business. They were rarely paid the same salary as men for doing the same job, and there was bias about the types of jobs women could do.

This continues to improve, but inequality still exists.

In university, many young women in my program came from farms. They were studying agriculture because they had an interest and wanted to remain within the industry. Many knew they would not take over the farm from their parents, whether because they had a brother, or because they didn’t feel they could manage it financially or physically.

I knew several women with more traditional fathers who wouldn’t even consider transitioning the farm to a woman, even if that woman was their daughter.

But the gap on inequality in the agriculture sector is closing.

The most recent Canadian census of agriculture statistics show the proportion of farmers that are women is greater than ever before, at 30 per cent.

More significantly, the number of women who are sole managers of a farm increased by 26.5 per cent from the previous census. And women aren’t operating small farms. Statistics show the growth in woman operators came primarily from the top three classes, farms with annual revenues ranging from $500,000 to more than $2 million.

In an op-ed for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, director Vanessa Renoud says census data shows that more women are stepping into leadership roles on farms of all types and sizes. She has first-hand experience, because she works with her father on the family farm near Green Valley, and is also as a Certified Crop Advisor and crop input consultant with farmers in her area.

She notes that for young women especially, “it’s not always easy to step into roles in this sector, whether it’s part of a farm business or in a wide range of other jobs and careers.”

Lack of mentorship is part of the problem, and that, too, is changing.

Renoud said a new agricultural mentorship program designed specifically for women is now available. It’s called AgriMentor and offers individual, one-on-one mentorship coaching nationwide for women working in agriculture.

The program was launched as a pilot by Quebec’s organization of farm women, the Agricultrices du Québec, and was a success.

In Ontario, AgriMentor is led by the Union des cultivateurs franco-ontariens (UCFO), with OFA support. Renaud said UCFO will match mentors and mentees, and the program is seeking both.

She said she didn’t have mentorship earlier in her career, and “although I had colleagues in similar situations that I could lean on, we weren’t able to give each other the type of guidance and insight a more experienced mentor can offer.”

I’m happy to see this type of program being offered. It’s more recognition that women have a greater role to play in the agriculture sector, and there is support to make that happen.