Women own 20 percent of New York state’s farms

By Sarah Hall

Editor

For Erin Hull, farm ownership started with a hamburger.

“My husband said he couldn’t find a decent hamburger anywhere in Central New York, so let’s raise our own cows,” Hull said. “I laughed at first. But then he went out and bought 13 cows. It wasn’t very long before I took over the day-to-day operations.”

Hull is one of many women across Central New York and the state who is the principal operator of a farm. According to the most recent U.S. agriculture census, conducted in 2012, women control 7 percent of the country’s farmland and make up 3 percent of its agricultural sales. Fourteen percent of the nation’s 2.1 million farms have a female principal operator (the person in charge of their day-to-day operations), and women account for 30 percent of the nations total farmers.

In New York state, according to the same census data, just under 20 percent of farmers are women. The average farm is 94 acres in size, compared to the state average of 202 acres. In Onondaga County, 173 of the 681 farms are operated by women; in Madison County, out of 838 farms, 151 list women as principal operators.

The face of local agriculture

Hull, who now owns and operates Lucky 13 Beef Farm in Tully, had grown up on a farm, but when she left for college, she swore she was done with the life.

“I said I would never be a farmer,” she said. “But I realized around the age of 30 that agriculture was my passion and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

For Diane Eggert, who owns Cobblestone Creek Farm in East Syracuse, the path to farm ownership started similarly. Her family grew for spring sales at the Central New York Regional Market and wholesale. Their season ran from January to November.

“Our lives really revolved around the farm,” Eggert said. “Vacations, holidays, even birthdays and weddings were all scheduled around the season. So growing up in that environment, you either love it or hate it.”

When she left for college, Eggert thought she was moving on from the farm—but instead, her green thumb followed her to school.

“I raised tomato plants in my dorm windows, shifting them to friends’ rooms as needed to capture the sun,” she said. “My friends thought I was nuts, but they helped me eat the tomatoes!”

After she graduated, Eggert said she was eager to maintain a connection to the farm, even as she took a job elsewhere.

“So I grew some vegetables and raised herbs for farmers market sales on the weekends, keeping my hands in the soil and my heart at the farm,” she said. “I then married a farmer who grew acres of field corn and grain crops. I left my office job and went to work full-time on my family’s farm, operating their farm stand, going to farmers markets, raising vegetables and bedding plants.”

Now Eggert runs the Farmers’ Market Federation of New York, a nonprofit that works with farmers markets statewide, in addition to running Cobblestone Creek, a vegetable farm, with her husband Steve.

Unlike Eggert and Hull, Tricia Park, a former Air Force mechanic, didn’t grow up on a farm. When she and her husband Matt decided they wanted to start one, they had no background in agriculture to support them.

“My husband had 26 acres with a big barn on it [in Tully Valley]. We built an apartment in the barn and put in a big garden,” Park said. “When our son was about 2, my husband had this idea that we should get cows to graze down the grass that we were mowing with the tractor. So that’s how we started with livestock. Then we added a dozen chickens and started selling the eggs.”

Gradually, the Parks added onto their brood, adding more grass-fed beef cows, more chickens, a bull, pigs and Thanksgiving turkeys. They started selling their meat, at first to family and friends then, by word of mouth, to an expanding audience. Ultimately, they ran out of land.

“We tried leasing, buying, borrowing, renting, squatting, but we just couldn’t get any land. And we couldn’t meet our demand,” Park said. “We finally decided to sell and bought the farm we have now.”

Park now owns and operates Creekside Meadows Farm in Cazenovia, a diversified farm that sells meat and vegetables, with her husband, Matt. She and her son, Cameron, are the sole full-time employees; Matt, who has an off-farm job, helps on the weekends.

More than 9 to 5

Indeed, the challenges for women farmers are no different than those for farmers in general. The chief problem is that, in many cases, most families need another income in order to continue to farm.

“My husband is out of town 150 to 160 nights a year. He travels for his job,” Hull said. “His occupation affords me the ability to do this.”

That means that, like Park, Hull is often on her own to manage the work of the farm.

“It’s just me,” she said. “When my husband’s home on the weekends, he helps out, but day to day, it’s just me.”

Hull said that was a lot tougher when her children were young, especially since she actually lives down the road from her farm.

“I used to have to put them in the car every time I had to go there,” she said. “It’s not easy getting two kids out the door. I had to do feeds twice a day. I’d have to pack them into the car every time.”

Now that her kids are 9 and 12, things are a little easier, but Hull is still Lucky 13’s sole employee, which can be tough on her family.

“If an animal is sick and you want to go shopping, too bad—sometimes you don’t come first,” she said. “Sometimes animals come before people.”

Financing is also a major challenge for farmers, especially when they’re first starting out. Eggert noted that there are resources to help in that regard, pointing to agencies such as FarmNet, the Farm Service Agency and Farm Credit.

“But loans are always a bit scary,” Eggert said. “Income from farming is never a guarantee, and the payments on loans must be paid. Having lived through the days of farm loans, I know that I would not want to be in that position again.”

While those challenges are not unique to women farmers, there can be some sexism in the business.

“I know that some suppliers can be a ‘good ole boys’ network [that are] sometimes resistant to doing business with females,” Eggert said. “But in my experience, this is happening less and less as agri-businesses become used to the growing number of women farmers.”

Annie’s Project and beyond

As the number of women farmers grows, so have the resources available to help them get started. Both Eggert and Hull have taken advantage of Annie’s Project (anniesproject.org), a nationwide program based in Illinois dedicated to helping women farmers. The program offers introductory courses in five risk areas, localized to meet the needs of farm and ranch women across the country. Topics include financial risk, human resource risk, market risk, legal risk and production risk. Farmers can then take further courses to learn about business, retirement and estate planning, as well as transitioning their farm to the next generation. Local classes are offered through the Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE).

“It was really informative, and discussion with the other women was invaluable,” said Eggert, who participated in the course this past winter. “It certainly helped me to gather my thoughts on the business side of the farm and start planning for new enterprises on the farm.”

In addition to Annie’s Project, there’s the Northeast Beginning Farmer Project (nebeginningfarmers.org), another effort through the CCE. The program offers online courses, in-person training events and conferences and a mentoring program for women, in which Park was a participant.

“I mentored with the program for four years,” she said. “I mentored Mary Ellen from Hartwood Farms and Angela Nelson from Daily Harvest, as well as Erin Bullard from Clark Hollow Hops in Fabius. A lot of the women I helped train went on to mentor others.”

In addition to women-specific programs, there are a variety of conferences and other resources available to the agricultural community, from the CCE to the Empire Producers Expo to the Mid-Atlantic Growers Conference, held in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

“It’s a great way to learn new things in both production and marketing,” Eggert said. “It’s also a great opportunity to network with other growers and explore ideas and techniques.”

Social media has also provided a fair amount of help, Eggert said.

“I also belong to many farm groups on Facebook where growers share their experiences, ask questions of one another and get some pretty good advice on a number of subjects,” she said. “There are many women farmers in these groups and the conversations are really invaluable.”

Park said those women are becoming more vocal about the role they play in farming.

“I think it’s that more women are being recognized. They’re stepping forward. They’ve always been doing the work,” she said. “Women are getting a little more recognition. They’re stepping forward and pointing out, ‘Hey, it’s not just my husband’s farm—it’s mine, too, and I’ve been working here all along.’”

Eggert said she was glad to see more women taking credit for their part in agriculture.

“While the work is hard, it is very rewarding. Coaxing food from the ground, building a customer base that supports the farm and the work you do is all intoxicating and something I wouldn’t ever want to give up,” she said. “So, as my father always told me as I was growing up — you can do anything you want to, as long as you work hard you can achieve it. Being female should not keep me or any other women from doing what they love.”