Women Continue To Take More Leadership Roles In Ag

Tuesday, we told you that Oregon is #4 in the nation when it comes to female farmers.  When it comes to nationwide, women are taking more and more of a leadership role.

"For the 2017 Census we redesigned our census form in an effort to better represent all people involved in U.S. Farming.  So one of the things we found out with that form redesign is that where we've asked about, is anyone involved with decisions for the farm is that we were able to count a lot more women."

Ginger Harris a NASS demographer said more women were counted even as the number of farms in the country dropped in the 2017 Census of Agriculture.

"However the number of producers on the farms, a producer is anyone involved in the farm's decisions, the number of producers went up by 7% of those producers the number of male producers went down by 1.7% but the number of women went up by almost 27%."

And how is the decision making distributed?  Harris said Women were more involved in day to day decisions and financial management decisions.  While men were more involved in land use decisions and livestock decisions.

If you have a story idea for the Washington Ag Network, call (509) 547-1618, or e-mail gvaagen@cherrycreekradio.com