invisible farmers, that’s what a
Penn State researcher calls them.
She’s talking about women who
farm, not those women who live on
farms with their husbands and
take care of a few farm chores in
addition to the housework She’s
talking about fulltime women
farmers. Carolyn Sachs is a rural
sociologist whose book, “The In
visible Farmers: Women in
Agricultural Production,” details
the difficult tune women farmers
have in today’s agriculture.
I’m convinced that many women
farmers aren’t even counted. The
Census Bureau has a unique way of
counting the men who farm as
farmers but their spouses,
regardless of their involvement,
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are categorized as unpaid family
labor. Even today with all the
equal opportunity talk Uncle Same
doesn’t understand that some
women who live on farms are
farmers while some men who live
on farms are not. A person’s sex
should really have nothing to do
with job title. A woman who farms
is a farmer. If she says she’s a
farmer, that’s good enough for me,
and if her husband who lives on the
same farm works at a bank, then
he’s a banker and perhaps also a
part-tune farmer, depending on his
involvement. On the other hand,
many women whose primary farm
involvement includes a garden and
helping out at harvesttime could
hardly be described as farmers.
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These spouses whose time centers
around the home or perhaps an off
farm job may not even qualify as
part-time farmers.
When it gets right down to
definitions, must a farmer till the
soil himself to be a farmer? What
about the man or woman who
operates hundreds of acres and
manages a number of hired
workers in a complex, far-flung
agricultural enterprise? That
manager may never sit a tractor
or personally drop a seed, and yet
by any stretch of the imagination
he or she is a farmer.
And what about the woman,
married or otherwise, who spends
most of her time managing the
paperwork of a complex farm
business? Let’s say more than half
of her time is spent balancing the
books, paying the bills, figuring the
taxes, ordering supplies and
otherwise dealing with the day-to
day business aspects of farming.
Would you say that person is a
farmer?
Here on the Delmarva peninsula,
it’s hard to find women farmers in
the traditional sense of the word.
Those few that are readily iden
tifiable usually are associated with
horse farms. But look a little
closer. There are hundreds of
women farmers, maybe not
identified by the Census Bureau,
but farmers nonetheless. Some are
spouses of farmers and are fully
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employed in a dozen different ways
in the farm business. They’re
working side by side with their
husbands in the dairy bam, in the
hog house, tilling the fields and
harvesting the crops.
What about all those women who
take care of the chickens in the
nation’s fourth largest broiler
producing area? In so many in
stances, the husband holds a full
time, off-farm job while tilling a
few acres during the evenings and
on weekends. Meanwhile his
spouse, this unpaid family labor
the Census Bureau talks about,
manages the chickens on a day-to
day basis. She provides the labor,
the watchful eye, the gently hand,
the expertise that produces
thousands and thousands of
chickens and in many instances an
income equal to that of her off
farm husband.
Another phenomena is occurring
because of current economic hard
times. Men are taking more off
farm jobs just to survive, leaving
the farm m the caretaker status of
their wives. In some cases this is a
temporary situation aimed at
keeping the wolf away from tht
door until the economics of far
ming improve. But in other cases,
this off-farm income has proven to
be so helpful that it will never
change. Meanwhile some wives
have found they enjoy this new
status as a full-time farm operator
WASHINGTON, D.C.
All corn in farmer
owned grain reserves IV
and V will remain in
release status through
May 31, according to
Everett Rank, ad
ministrator of the U.S.
Department of
Agriculture’s Agricult
ural Stabilization and
Conservation Service.
Oats also will remain in
release status through
May 31.
Rank said the decision
on the reserve com
modities was made
following a review today
by USDA’s Commodity
Credit Corporation of
average market prices,
as reported by USDA’s
Agricultural Marketing
Service, adjusted to
reflect the market price
received by farmers.
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They enjoy the work, the decision
making, the feeling of ac
complishment as the dairy herd
improves and the crop yields trend
upward.
Whatever it is that makes far
ming worthwhile for men is also
doing the same thing for some
women. It’s about time the
government and some other in
stitutions recognize this. The Penn
State researcher says farming
women lack access to land, credit
and proper training, and she says
many of them are relegated to
second-class status on their own
farms doing the farm work their
husbands prefer not to do.
Perhaps it’s time for farn.
women to speak up, to get
organized, to demand the same
kinds of training, information and
services their husbands have been
receiving for years. I know farm
women belong to organizations but
most of these are farm wife
organizations, those aimed at
helping a wife support her farming
husband. But maybe it’s time to go
past the farm wife groups and deal
directly with the problems of
women who farm.
The classic example of the need
for this kind of change was ob
served in a recent meeting of
dairymen and their wives. While
the program covered a number of
topics of interest to the wife who is
involved in the dairy business, she
was encouraged to take a tour of
some local scenic places while the
men gamed the worthwhile in
formation. Believe me, ladies, that
won’t change as long as men plan
the programs and as long as
women are content to let them.
Corn status reported
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JEWELERS
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Manheim, Pa 17545
On May 1, the ad
justed price for com
was $3.26 per bushel, 11
cents above the release
level of $3.15 for reserve
IV com and 1 cent above
the release level of $3.25
for reserve V com. The
adjusted price for oats
was $1.75, 10 cents
above the release level.
Daily markets
reviewed by CCC for
com are Kansas City,
Minneapolis, Omaha
and St. Louis. The daily
market reviewed for
oats is Minneapolis.
For reserve IV and V
corn loans, storage
payments stopped and
interest resumed on
May 1. Storage
payments stopped and
interest resumed Feb. 1
for oats.
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