Tour de Farm: A Cross Country Bike Quest For the Female Farmer Perspective. By Claire Thompson
Awesome article for me to read as I embark on the AgXposure in the GoFarm program! One of my questions to the Rapune brothers was whether this new generation of farmers has it easier than their generation, what with programs like GoFarm hand feeding these kinds of resources, or if the politics and land lease policies and tendencies makes it harder for land access and other important resources/motivation. Here these nomadic psuedo-researchers on bikes/my heroes mention disadvantages of folks gung ho and eager to start farming in their early 20's.
The issue of developing a business sense for your farm is exactly what the GoFarm program addresses as well!!
Q. Overall, have the women you’ve met been new farmers or people coming from a farming background?
A. LB: Mostly new farmers. We definitely have spoken to some women who have been in this movement way before it was cool, for the last 30, 40 years. But another theme that has been interesting with our new farmers: Some of them grew up farming, and were not interested in pursuing that type of life when they were young, and they went and took up marketing careers and jobs in the city and then ended up returning back to the farm. But then there’s also been a handful of mid-20-year-olds who are embarking on this new kind of lifestyle and have no family background.
CH: That’s a slight difference, I would say, between the older farmers and the young farmers, is that the older ones tended to have had other jobs, made themselves a safety net being marketing people or real-estate people or something, but always [had] that farm dream in themselves somewhere. Whereas the younger generation, Lake’s and my age, they’re going for it right off the bat.
We had one farmer named Susan Jutz in Solon, Iowa — she held upMichael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, and she said, these are the worst books that have ever happened to me. Because these young folks come in with this super romantic vision of what it’s going to be like on the farm, and it’s actually extremely hard work.
LB: One thing that the older farmers have chimed in about is the fast turnover rate for young farmers, which is generally one to five years, and some of them attributed that to [young farmers] not having [had] careers and not developing the business mind. Because to sustain yourself with farming you need to treat it like a business.
Q. What other common threads have you noticed among the women farmers you’ve met?
A. CH: We find that women tend to think a little more relationally, in terms of systems and how the different parts fit together in the big picture. That has repercussions both on the flow of their farm, if they have animals and plants working together, [and] also in terms of economics -- that, alright, perhaps I’m not gonna get rich on this, but in the long term, it’s better for me and it’s better for my community.
I think a huge theme since day one [of this trip] has been learning what it is to be generous. Everyone we meet — farmers, strangers who see that we’re biking across the country — everyone is just so incredibly open-hearted. The farmers feed us the most delicious food; people give us things just because they want to be a part of the journey. Just the basic human goodness that we have been so blessed to encounter really uplifts me. And the funny part is, they all warn us about the weirdos out there, but we haven’t met any.