Helping Women Farmers
Helping Women Farmers
I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.
Women who visit the womenfarmers.org website will find it chock full of helpful advice for women who already own their own farm and women who want to own their own farm. Washington lavender farmer and website founder Vivian Nielsen explains what women will find on the website.
NIELSEN: Women can come in and get an organized way of how do you start a farm - from everywhere to how do you find the land, to how do you find your market, to how do you find equipment and seeds, and how do you run a farm where you’re actually in the black as opposed to in the red.
Nielsen says that she has found a common thread in talking with numerous women farmers.
NIELSEN: What I found is that while there’s a lot of women farmers out there many of them are not making a profit. That’s the sadness of it is they get to have a go at it and then they give up because they haven’t made a profit. A lot of them are from the business sector and for some reason they haven’t taken the things that they’ve learned in business and transferred it to the farming piece, which you have to do if you want to make a profit at all in farming.
Nielsen hits on another aspect of farming not often thought about by beginning farmers.
NIELSEN: It’s hard work, even on a lavender farm it’s still work. And a lot of people jump into it not realizing that there’s a lot of physical labor and that you have to still run it like a business.
To find out more about becoming a farm owner or how to connect with other women farmers around the country visit www.womenfarmers.org.
I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Ag Information Network.