This Saturday is International Women’s Day – a perfect opportunity to honour an often-overlooked force in Canadian food and farming.
Although traditionally, Canadian agriculture has been a male-dominated industry, women have always had very critical roles in farm businesses. Those roles were often of a supportive or behind-the-scenes nature, managing the farm’s books for example while also working full-time off the farm in careers like nursing or teaching for example.
That’s still sometimes the case today, but we are now seeing a significant shift in how women are involved in the industry. As our traditional views of gender roles change and a younger generation of farmers is taking over from those who are retiring, women are increasingly stepping into management and leadership roles in farms of all types and sizes.
Women are also working in a wide range of jobs in the broader agriculture sector, from animal nutritionists and certified crop advisors to veterinarians, researchers, transporters and more. In fact, you name a job in agriculture and you’re just as likely to find a woman in that role today as you would a man.
The last Canadian Census of Agriculture put some numbers to this shift that we’re seeing. It recorded the first increase in the number of women who are farming in our country in 30 years – 30 per cent or about 80,000 of Canada’s farmers are female.
That same Census showed that women are running larger farms than ever before, with an 86.3% increase in women running farms with $2 million or more in annual revenue. Ontario is home to the largest proportion of women farmers, followed by Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec.
I grew up as a dairy farmer’s daughter and wasn’t planning to be farmer. Life sometimes has other ideas, though, and today I farm in the Eastern Ontario county of Lanark, near Carleton Place where my husband and I raise beef cattle and grow crops.
I’m also on the board of directors for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, representing farmers in Arnprior, Lanark, Ottawa and Renfrew, and I teach in the business agriculture diploma program at Algonquin College’s Perth campus.
I currently share that OFA board table with five other women, one of whom serves as a Vice President of our organization. The OFA’s general manager is female, and so is our Past President; many other farm and agricultural organizations are also led by women or have female board members, and Ontario has had several female ministers of agriculture.
This past week, I attended the Canadian Federation of Agriculture annual meeting in Ottawa and had the opportunity to meet with farm leaders and industry representatives from across the country. This included young women who are part of this next generation of farmers and are shaking things up in the industry.
Two young women were part of a group of four emerging leaders that the OFA invited to join us at the CFA convention, including one who is a fourth generation beef and sheep farmer and is a graduate of the agricultural business program I teach at Algonquin.
It’s through that role at the college that I see a lot of young women who are coming into this industry and doing unique and interesting things, whether as their primary career or who have decided to transition into agriculture after working in another field.
Regardless of how they come to our sector, however, they’re smart, dedicated, passionate and keen to pursue a future in farming. These are qualities that will serve them well – agriculture isn’t always easy and challenges come from many sides, from weather and political turmoil to economics and changing consumer demands, but it’s also a life that is infinitely rewarding.
