#womeninag

Every month, USDA shares the story of a woman in agriculture who is leading the industry and helping other women succeed along the way. This month, we hear from Mary Safie, owner of Safie Specialty Foods. In 1994, Mary took over her family’s canning business which began in 1929 in her grandfather’s kitchen with food grown on his farm in Chesterfield Township, Michigan. Specializing in pickled vegetables, Safie’s has experienced success domestically and abroad, with assistance from USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service and State Regional Trade Groups.

Every month, USDA shares the story of a woman in agriculture who is leading the industry and helping other women succeed along the way. This month, we hear from Dr. Cathy Kling, a Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a professor of economics at Iowa State University. She has served as the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) since July 2013. She received a bachelor's degree in business and economics from the University of Iowa and a doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland. In 2015, she became the first female ISU faculty member named to the National Academy of Sciences. In her work at CARD, Kling is undertaking research to examine how agricultural practices affect water quality, wildlife, soil carbon content, and greenhouse gases.

How did you first become interested in studying economics? What drove you to explore agriculture in particular?

I took an undergraduate economics class as a sophomore in college. Within a few weeks I had changed my major to economics and by the end of the semester I had decided to go to graduate school to study more about this amazing field. I didn't begin my work in agricultural economics for many years, and my interest in agriculture stem largely from my primary interest in environmental issues.  I consider myself an environmental economist with strong interest in agricultural issues related to the environment.

In an effort to lift up the opportunities available for women in the agricultural field, USDA shares stories of women who are leading the industry and helping other women succeed along the way. In this post, USDA Deputy Chief Information Officer for Policy and Planning Joyce Hunter shares her perspective as a woman in the technology field and how she puts her unique experience and skills to work at USDA.

Ms. Hunter oversees the Department’s strategic technology planning initiatives, establishes policy framework, and lays the track for the future. With over 30 years’ experience in the information technology industry, Ms. Hunter has a strong ability to build and sustain relationships with public/private stakeholders and lead innovative projects and inter-agency initiatives.  Earlier this year, she was selected by the editors of FedScoop as one of "D.C.’s Top 50 Women in Technology.”

Every month, USDA shares the story of a woman in agriculture who is leading the industry and helping other women succeed along the way. This month, we hear from Beth Robinette, a rancher and leader in the local food and regional food movement in Spokane, Washington. She runs her family's fourth-generation grass fed beef operation the Lazy R Ranch, and is one of the co-founders of LINC Foods, a worker and farmer owned cooperative food hub based in Spokane. She studied sustainable agriculture and business and marketing at Fairhaven College at Western Washington University, and earned her MBA in Sustainable Systems at Pinchot University with an emphasis on Local Living Economies and Sustainable Food and Agriculture.

How did you first become interested in the local and regional food movement?

Local food was really the norm in my household growing up. We raised a lot of our own food, or we would trade beef for things we didn’t raise ourselves. My grandpa was a prolific gardener and I can vividly remember the joy of eating a perfectly ripe tomato, warm from the sun, out of his garden. My dad had a part-time job working for a sustainable agriculture non-profit called the Washington State Food and Farming Network when I was in middle school and high school. He was the Eastern Washington coordinator and his job put him in contact with many movers and shakers in the local/regional food movement, which was really my first exposure to the idea. It wasn’t until I left for college, however, that I began to realize how privileged I had been to grow up on a ranch, and that most of my fellow students had a totally different relationship to food and agriculture than I did. I read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma for a class my freshman year, and I was pretty much hooked on local food from then on.

At the Agricultural Marketing Service and across USDA, we often talk about the fact that the face of American agriculture is changing. The ranks of our farmers, especially young and beginning farmers, include a growing number of women, people of color, veterans or folks in their second careers. So-called “traditional” agriculture defies the term as it pursues new strategies, new products, and new markets. Across the country, agriculture is diversifying and evolving to meet changing consumer demands.

I saw the new face of agriculture last week during travels to Illinois and Indiana. My first stop was a roundtable on Women in Agriculture held at FarmedHere in Bedford Park, Illinois, about 15 miles from Chicago. Twenty or so women gathered to talk about their farming goals and to hear about how USDA could support them. This topic is close to my heart – I’m a New Hampshire native, a state with the second highest percentage of women farmers in the country. The women around the table with me represented the new face of ag, but so too did the setting – an indoor, vertical farm that produces basil and microgreens in a facility designed to reduce energy costs and shrink the carbon footprint of growing food.  FarmedHere is managed by Megan Klein, an attorney by training who found her calling in urban agriculture and became part of this “new face.”

Every month, USDA shares the story of a woman in agriculture who is leading our industry and helping other women succeed along the way. This month, we sit down with Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services (FFAS) Deputy Under Secretary Alexis Taylor to discuss USDA’s Women in Agriculture mentorship network and her personal commitment to making sure the next generation of women is educated, encouraged and empowered to take on the world’s growing food, fuel and fiber needs.

An Army veteran and native Iowan, Deputy Under Secretary Taylor, who assumed the duties of the FFAS Under Secretary in February, leads the Department’s charge in international and domestic farm policy including overseeing commodity, credit, conservation, disaster, and emergency assistance programs that help improve the stability and strength of the agricultural economy. She works to build new markets and improve the competitive position of U.S. agricultural products in the global marketplace, and leads the Department’s Women in Agriculture mentorship network.

As an auditor for USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), I am one of a small group of highly-qualified individuals from across the country who audits companies that use our programs and services to add value to their products in the market place.  One of these programs is the USDA Process Verified Program, or USDA PVP for short.

For a PVP audit, I do a significant amount of preparation before I’m even on-site, pouring over the Quality Manual the company prepared as part of their application.  The Quality Manual – the starting point for any PVP – documents all of the process points, the scope of each, and the standard I am ensuring they will meet. To evaluate this effectively, I rely on my extensive training in International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) quality management system requirements and audit principles, as well as training specific to the industry, processes, and points being audited.

As part of our ongoing #womeninag series, we are highlighting a different leading woman in agriculture each month.  This month, we profile Dr. Lois Wright Morton, professor of sociology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University and director of the USDA-NIFA Climate & Corn-based Cropping System Coordinated Agricultural Project.

Dr. Morton’s research focuses on the relationship between people and the natural environment as it relates to climate change. She discusses with us the impact research has on women worldwide and how the field continues to evolve.

NOTE: This week on the USDA Blog, we’ll feature the stories of America’s Harvest Heroes who, like farmers across the nation, are working this harvest season to secure the bounty of healthy food American agriculture is renowned for. From laying the foundation for the next generation of farmers putting down roots in rural America, supporting the fruit and vegetable growers who are helping to build healthier communities, bolstering new markets for the products of agricultural innovation, to harvesting renewable energy that is made in Rural America, with USDA’s support our farmers are yielding strong results for every American.

Farming and ranching in central North Dakota is a family affair for the Zieschs. Shelly and Robin Ziesch have three daughters who are all involved in agriculture, from ranching on their own to agriculture education to helping out on the family farm. These soon-to-be grandparents take great pride in their oldest daughter, Bailie, a nurse who also ranches with her husband Russell just south of Mandan, ND. Their middle daughter, Cassidy, attends North Dakota State University and is studying to be an agriculture teacher. She comes home often (whenever there isn’t a home football game) to help out. Their youngest daughter, Morgan, is a junior in high school and between her many sports and activities helps out on the ranch.

Both Shelly (SZ) and Morgan (MZ) share their insights into what it means to be a woman in agriculture and how each of them thinks about the future of their family operation.

To wrap up our Women’s Week blog series, we hear from Onelisa Garza, a current college senior at Texas A&M University, Kingsville who was raised in the small town of Linn, Texas. Onelisa has been very active in organizations like 4-H and FFA her whole life and has held many leadership positions through them. She discusses how she discovered that she wanted to dedicate her career to helping others understand the importance of agriculture.  Onelisa has been in many agriculture science classes where the other students had never seen cattle in real life or a field of cotton – things that she always took for granted growing up. She will graduate in December of 2015 and plans to use her agriculture degree to become a County Extension Agent for 4-H Youth and Development.