American Farming: Not a One-(Wo)Man-Job
When one types the phrase “American
farmer” into an online search engine, they find a list of different websites
that lead to a variety of cultural interpretations of farming in America. The
first, of course, matches the search word for word: Americanfarmers.com.
Consider the page the beginner’s guide to American farming, which is worthwhile
to me since I know very little about the American farm… or farming at all. At
the top of the home page, there are four tabs that lead to different areas of
the website. The researcher can click on the farm blog where they will find
unique stories centered around agriculture, the latest about an Iowa farmer, a
woman, April Hemmes, who has temporarily uprooted herself and is having unexpected
experiences in China with a group of other ag-enthusiast women from Iowa. Most
of them are the care takers of American farms and are interested in bringing
their knowledge of agriculture to a plethora of other countries. April’s story
is particularly interesting because unlike what is typically thought to be a
man’s job, April does on her own. Her husband does not run the farm with her.
The article mentions that he has another job downtown. The small difference is
noted in the article because it is not typical of the culture. For centuries,
American farmers have been men, but April’s experiences in China remind her
that there are far more avenues for women in farming, not only in American culture,
but there are international changes being made, as well. Hemme’s first
describes
Rogers
and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, written
in 1943, set in forty years earlier at the beginning of the Midwest land rush
follows a plethora of typical American farmers. While the story is mostly
framed by the relationship of Curly McClain and Laurey Williams, it is
extremely telling of what life was like before the establishment of the western
portion of the United States. Perhaps the most telling piece of the production
happens in a disagreement between farmers and cowmen within the town.
Susan D. Blum explores the
differences of men and women in farming. She starts the piece out by discussing
typical thoughts about American farmers and later dives into the importance of
women farmers in sustainable farms.
“When people think of farmers, they
usually think of men. Iconic images of
farming
might include rough, burly guys using heavy equipment. But nowadays, more women
have become farmers, especially in contexts of sustainable food. Using the life
stories of three such women, I show how they came to this work and what it
means. It is much more of a calling than a conventional form of work,
precipitated by crises, illuminated by epiphanies, and benefiting from skills accumulated
in these women’s
previous
work life. Their work may be summed up as redemptive” (Blum, 315).
With this piece of literature, it is
important to note that the author discusses different types of agriculture.
This piece reads like a journal or an exposé of women in farming and there is a
great emphasis put on the local context of the women being examined. When
thinking about farming, it is very important to think about the context in
which piece was written. Blum’s piece in particular talks about specific areas
of the United States that need help in being built up. She talks about how
American women are so needed in this task. Blum also talks about the importance
of the consumer having face-to-face contact with the distributor. In this case,
the distributor is the farmer. It makes sense that women would be the perfect
candidates for this face-to-face contact because when thinking about
stereotypes, women are typically found to be more understanding, more
comfortable, and more hospitable in these types of situations. Blum also says
that farm tours are popular, and who is a better tour guide than the woman of
the farm, who knows the ins and outs of the land both behind the scenes as well
as what is on the surface. The author talks about her interaction between a few
different women on separate farms and highlights all of their strengths. Every
detail that she gives about each woman shows that farming culture that is
typically remembered by the general public is a valid one (the cook, the
mother) but she makes very valid points to show that a woman’s domestic qualities
can also be used as assets on the business side of the farm. This is a
different perspective than literature typically portrays.
To understand male and female roles
within the American farm, however, it is important to first understand the
American farm as the living, breathing unit that it is. In class a few weeks
ago, we talked about the difference between farmers and ranchers. Not knowing
the difference, I asked. Someone in the class turned around, looked at me, and
told me “Ranchers work with animals. Farmers work with everything else” and the
lyrics to this song immediately entered my mind.
“The farmer and the cowman should be
friends.
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be
friends.
One man likes to push a plough, the other
likes to chase a cow,
But that's no reason why they can't be
friends.”
I
found it so interesting that I was able to make that sort of cultural tie to
something I have heard in a piece of literature. The lyrics suggest exactly
what I was told in class: the rancher (cowman) works with animals while the
farmer handles everything else. As I read these words, I was led to wonder
about ranches and farms and whether or not the two could ever be one. If a
ranch is involved in the production of grown goods, was it a farm, too? If
cattle is raised by a farmer, is he also a rancher?
In the AgEcon search engine, I found a
piece of writing that defines the two. I learned that, not only do ranchers
specialize in the reproduction and raising of animals, most of them are also
specialized with certain varieties. For instance, some ranches are in the
business of raising cattle specifically for beef, and some are only in the
market for sheep to sheer, skin, and use for meat. Something that I found
interesting in the journal was that farmers
and ranchers who are coming into the business late are not able to keep their
farms alive unless their specializations are general, and just the way ranchers
will be less likely to specialize in specific livestock, farmers late to the
game are less likely to specialize in the production of certain crops and will
most likely grow an entire variety of things (Ahearn, 2).This answered the
question I had about farmers and ranchers working with each other to incorporate
the different goods in their specialties. There is a line in the same song that
mentions that the rancher ropes the cattle and then the farmer steals milk and
cheese from the cow. This stuck out to me because it means that the two of them
need each other. The farmer needs the rancher to grow the cattle and keep it
healthy until it’s ready for milking. Both parties benefit from the cattle’s
production. There are profits on both sides.
With my new awareness of real life
relationships between farming reality and film, I decided to see what kinds of
other films were being made about the American farm.
In 1926, Alfred Hitchcock directed a
silent film called The Farmer’s Wife. This
film is interesting because the entire premise of it revolves around the main
character, Samuel Sweetland, obtaining a wife after the passing of his first
wife. He asks multiple women in the community about being his wife and is
rejected multiple times, until, at the end, he decides to marry his
housekeeper. This says so much about the typical American farmer in the early
years of the twentieth century. Sweetland, a farmer, longs for the
companionship of another. It is typical in American culture for the wife to be
the cooker, the fixer of whatever it is that the husband grows. This silent
film does a very good job of emphasizing that. The housekeeper, who later turns
out to be the wife, takes care of Sweetland the entire time. She fusses with
the brides that he attempts to marry and takes care of everyone else as well. She,
undoubtedly, represents a strong woman in the farm.
The strong-willed woman in this
silent film reminded me of April Hemmes, though the roles are reversed. Both
women are extremely strong and extremely good at their jobs, regardless of how
different they are. The traditional woman’s role, to cook and prepare goods
from the farm, is an extremely important to her family, but it is just as
important for April, the woman, the caretaker, to grow and produce the food for
the well-being of her family, and even though she is out in the field from dawn
until dusk, she is still responsible for putting a prepared meal on the table.
I find it so interesting that tradition as we have known it has shifted, but
the principle is still the same.
Allessandra Galié’s academic
research, “Empowering Women Farmers” searches through records of women farmers
in Syria. Although this is not a piece of literature working around the
American farmer, the things that she writes can be applied to the American
woman farmer as well. She talks about the importance of empowering the woman
farmer. “Empowerment is an elusive concept. It has been conceptualized, for
instance, as an ongoing process of change in power relations” (Galié, 60). This
quote is taken from an excerpt of Galié’s research that shows the empowerment
of women through technological advances in plant science engineering. Galié
goes on cites Mary Parker Follet, who discusses the great importance of
dualistic power in the type of research that she is doing as well as in the world
of farming. In this context, she is talking, specifically about plant-science
engineering dualistic power, but the same principle fits nicely into the
framework for farming communities.
“Mary Parker Follett provides an
alternative to these empowerment disempowerment dualistic discourses by looking
at copower, which focuses on relationships and on individual empowerment as
increasing the power of all rather than as a reallocation of the existing power”
(60-61).
The idea of dualistic power is an
interesting one to bring up when talking about women. In cultures throughout
the world, women are known for creating and maintaining relationships. When I
think of my next door neighbor, I remember the eggs she lent my mother when we
were baking and ran out of our own eggs. I remember my kindergarten teacher who
consistently cared about how well I was learning to write the alphabet more
than how inconsistently I held the pencil between my fingers. Women cultivate
relationships, and isn’t it interesting that this can be transferred to women
in farming? Farmers create relationships with the land, so wouldn’t it empower
women farmers to create relationships with each other and create a stronger
bond with the land? This excerpt of Galié’s piece makes the most sense to me.
Regardless of the kind of farmer a woman is, if the responsibilities of the
farm are being carried out by a plethora of other hands, the farm will remain
in tact, and that’s important. Women are important to farming technology
because women are the ones who stitch together the pieces of community between
farms.
When I think about farming in film,
one of the first movies that comes to mind is The Wizard of Oz. I don’t think
about Dorothy’s role up front, but the role of Miss Gulch, who turns out to be
the Wicked Witch of the West. I find it interesting that Dorothy, the dog, and
Aunt Em (though she won’t fully admit it) refuse to get on board with Miss
Gulch. The audience is led to believe that Toto is the core of that
disagreement, but it the upset is rooted so much deeper. Miss Gulch doesn’t
contribute to the community the way Dorothy and Aunt Em do. While it is never
said explicitly that Miss Gulch doesn’t contribute, it is hard to believe her
character as one who does. In the film, the audience sees Dorothy conversing
with the men who feed the pigs and we see Aunt Em feeding the chickens. The
only glimpse we get of Miss Gulch is her awful voice and lack of a relationship
with any of the Gails. Her coldness reflects her character. The entire black and
white scene in Aunt Em’s house, Miss Gulch is trying to take Toto away, but she
is also destroying a relationship, possibly, with the town’s egg supply. We, as
an audience, are programmed to find this jarring. Women are supposed to be
hospitable. Women in farming communities, particularly, are supposed to want to
keep relationships with other women around the town because farms are trade and
relationship based. More importantly, they are hospitality based, and Miss Almira
Gulch knows nothing about hospitality. This relates back to Galié’s empowerment
of women. Women should share the responsibility of being important
bread-winning faculties because one person, even a woman, is stronger with the
relationship and support of others.
Allen Hall and Veronika Mogyorody
take a different approach to gender on the farm. Their research argues that
gender norms have a specific place on the American farm and should be kept in
that place. They argue that the farm does better when classic cultural gender
norms remain in effect. Their research stems from case studies of female and
male farmers throughout America. They make it very clear that both genders have
their rightful and important roles on the farm, but they also make it clear
that research shows that farms are more successful when men and women have
their particular places. This article was very interesting to read because it
talked about the relationship between men and women in classic farms and how
men typically had more success in the field, but how women had more success
with organic vegetable farms. “Another link between vegetable farming and female involvement
is that many female organic vegetable farmers were often gardeners who had developed
a certain skill set and knowledge base that were readily transferable” (Hall;
Mogyorody, 15). This statistic is fascinating and makes perfect sense. If a
woman has had great success domestically and in the garden, she will absolutely
be a better organic farmer than a man would. I think Hall and Mogyorody are
valid in all of their research because numbers don’t lie, but I’d also like to
expand to it by saying that it’s not necessarily about men or women being
better, it’s about who has more experience. At one point in the article, it is
said that men are better with labor than they are domestically, and that makes
sense. Men don’t typically have much experience in the home as women do. Tending,
caring, and cooking is in the very DNA that makes up a woman, so they refine
those attributes daily. Men are strong, persistent, and laborious. This is not
to say that women are not sometimes this way, that there are no exceptions to
the rule of gender, but there is something to be said for men and women having
different traits that make them better at certain things than others.
To close this paper, I’d like to discuss women in agriculture
across the globe. The United States Agency of International Development,
together with The United States Department of State, Bureau of Public
Affairs put together a pamphlet of women in agriculture throughout the world.
This pamphlet discusses the importance of investing in women when it comes to
agriculture.
“When women’s productivity and incomes
increase, the benefits amplify across families and generations. Women tend to
devote a larger fraction of their income to their children’s health and
nutrition, laying the foundation for their children’s lifelong cognitive and
physical development” (USDS, 2-3).
I like this particular
quote because I feel like it makes a very poignant point about women in farming.
Not only are female farmers breathing life into the land for the current
generation, but they are also making it possible for the next generation to
survive and thrive off of the land. Women typically have a larger opportunity
to educate the next generation of children, and if they are good farmers, do
well with growing and tending to agriculture, not only are they going to
produce crops and goods that will be viable for this generation, but they will
also produce viable crops for generations to come through their offspring, and
that is far more important than just producing for one group of people. This is
something I’ve never thought of before, and I think that reading this article
opened up my eyes to the great impacts that women farmers can have on
communities. Of course men can be the same way. Men can raise their children
similarly to the way women raise their children, but as previously discussed,
we are dealing with gender norms and the typical culture of female and male
farmers.
For centuries, women in farming have
been thought of in the same way. They have been thought of as nurturing women
who stand beside the farmer under all circumstances, good or bad. While this is
not a negative view of farmers or women, it is important to recognize that
there are also, in the farming culture, plenty of women who carry family farms
in times of hardship as well as times of great bounty. Women are strong assets
to the farm in terms of domesticity as well as performing hard labor tasks.
Works Cited
Ahearn, Mary Clare. “Beginning Farmers and Ranchers
at a Glance 2011
Edition. AgEcon
Search. http://purl.umn.edu/146309
Beach, Sarah S. "'Tractorettes' or Partners? Farmers' Views
on Women in Kansas
Farming Households." Rural
Sociology 1 June 2013: 210-28, 19p. Print.
Allessandra, Galié. "Empowering
Women Farmers." Frontiers: A Journal of Women
Studies 1 Jan.
2013: 58-92, 35 P. Print.
Hall, Allen; Mogyorody, Veronika.
"Organic Farming, Gender, and the Labor
Process."
Rural Sociology 1 June 2007: 289-316. Print.
Hemmes,
April: http://www.americasfarmers.com/2014/09/24/farm-mom/
Shortall, Sally. "Gender, Work
& Organization Vol. 8 Issue 2, P164. 18p." Women in the
Field:
Women, Farming and Organizations 1 Apr. 2001: 164. Print.
United States Agency for
International Development; United States. Department of State.
Bureau of
Public Affairs. http://purlfdlp.gov/GPO/gpo14776.
Electronic
Resource. 1
December 2014.
The Farmer’s Wife. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. British
International Pictures, 1928. Film.
The Wizard of Oz. Perf. Judy
Garland Frank Morgan Ray Bolger Bert Lahr
Jack Haley
Billie Burke Margaret Hamilton Charley Grapewin Clara
Blandick Pat
Walshe. Metro-Goldwin-Mayer, 1939. Film.
Oklahoma! Zinnemann, Fred. Magna Theater
Corporation, 1955. Film.
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