The Female Face of Farming

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Cook, writer, and photographer Audra Mulkern has been photographing and interviewing women farmers over the last few years for her chronicle aptly named "The Female Farmer Project". Mulkern says she discovered quite quickly that a lot of the women she's spoken with who are first generation farmers are coming from the corporate world.

MULKERN: These women have very educated backgrounds, and that kind of goes against the sort of stereotype. An interesting thing about that too is that they're bringing kind of a different business model to the farms as well.

Mulkern plans on continuing her work with "The Female Farmer Project".

MULKERN: As I'm visiting more and more farms I am seeing some themes of important stories that need to be shared as part of the story of women rising, you know the stories of redefining that farming business model, the stories of land ownership and acquiring loans and creating financial stability and sustainable farming systems. There's a lot of women out there that are the pioneers of sort of this sustainability movement, and there's a lot of women who are rising and who are coming into this - who are creating change. I am just going to continue at this point just to keep getting this in front of people so people do see who is growing their food and what it takes. I think once you understand that you appreciate what's on your plate a lot more.

To learn more about "The Female Farmer Project" and Mulkern's other literary and photographic works visit www.audramulkern.com.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray with the Ag Information Network of the West.