Dr. Anna Rachel Terman
KJZZ interviews Dr. Anna Rachel Terman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ohio University, in a story headlined “Women Move Up The Ranks Of Arizona’s Agriculture Industry.”
Women are moving up the ranks in Arizona’s farming operations.
These days more women nationwide are identifying as a primary operator. That change is making an impact on how the industry does business.
…That’s partly because farm operations and the large tracts of land that often come with them have primarily been passed down to the men in farm families.
But rather than turning away from the industry with this challenge, many women are simply starting small, leasing small plots from cities, community gardens, and the like.
Rachel Terman, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio University and co-author of the book “The Rise of Women Farmers and Sustainable Agriculture,” explained that because running a large scale commercial farm is often out of reach for most women, many are turning to alternative farming methods when jumping into the industry.
This means organic and so called sustainable agriculture are, in turn, seeing an increase.
Terman added, women are also creating informal education networks to help each other navigate the industry.
“So women who have entered farming but may be new and beginning farmers, or maybe grew up on a farm but didn’t have access to training that their male counterparts did, needed to find different ways of learning about agriculture, learning about how to farm, run a business,” Terman said.
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