#womeninag

Meet Mariana Lizeth González Sánchez

The future of agriculture is bright when looking at young people like Mariana Lizeth González Sánchez, a current member of the National Mango Board. With nearly 8 years’ experience in the mango industry, Sanchez is the manager of exports at EB International. In her role, Sanchez is responsible for purchasing, logistics, exporting and marketing of mangos.

As a native Georgian, it is always a treat to go back home and see what’s happening on my family farm as well as the farms of my neighbors. Today I had the pleasure of meeting Jean Oliver, a dedicated mother, daughter and cattle farmer. She recently received a microloan from the Farm Service Agency to help build her operation. Within the next 10 years, Jean plans to make the leap from working 9-to-5 as a counselor with the Cook County school system to living off of her family’s 200-year-old farm, raising and selling cattle.

Here is her story:

From the classroom to the farm to the boardroom, young women in agriculture are helping to pave the way for a better future. They are breaking down barriers and creating opportunities that are inspiring positive change in our agricultural communities and beyond.

In September, the White House will recognize young women who are leading and inspiring their communities as advocates, peer-mentors, artists, innovators, and entrepreneurs as Champions of Change. I encourage our women in agriculture to put forth nominations for young leaders that you would like to see represented in the following categories:

As part of our ongoing #womeninag series, we are highlighting a different leading woman in agriculture each month.  This month, we profile Casey Cox, the Executive Director of the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District. In this role, she manages the Flint River Partnership, an agricultural water conservation initiative formed by the Flint River SWCD, USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, and The Nature Conservancy.

Casey is also learning her family's farm operation Longleaf Ridge, and will be the sixth generation of her family to farm along the Flint River. Upon receiving a Bachelor of Science in Natural Resource Conservation from the University of Florida, she returned to South Georgia to support agriculture and ongoing conservation efforts in her local community.

Meet Verity Ulibarri

Family values have proven to be the source of Verity Ulibarri’s success. As the vice president for Farm Credit of New Mexico and a board director for the Sorghum Checkoff, the sorghum producer from New Mexico is making strides in the agriculture industry.

Ulibarri, a fifth-generation farmer, said she always wanted to be a farmer. She and her husband, Anthony, started their own farming operation in 2011. They grow sorghum and wheat and run stocker cattle on approximately 1,700 acres of land.

Emily Diamond is a wife, mother, and farmer. She and her family own and operate the Diamond Family Farm in LaGrange, Kentucky. Emily’s farm supplies meat for her family and to the surrounding community through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Through CSAs, the community commits to buying the farm’s harvest, sharing both the bounty and risk of farming.

As new farmers, the Diamond family had a dream of producing healthy meat for their family on their own farm.

After hard work and saving their earnings, the family purchased land and began farming. “We built it all from scratch,” Emily said, “but looking back, it would have been easier if we would have purchased land with fencing and a barn already in place.”

As part of our ongoing #womeninag series, we are highlighting a different leading woman in agriculture each month.  This month, we profile Cory Carman. Cory’s family has been ranching in Wallowa, Oregon since 1913. After graduating from Stanford with an environmental policy degree and working in Washington, DC and in Los Angeles, Cory returned to rural Oregon in 2003.  She now runs Carman Ranch with her husband, Dave Flynn and business partner Jill McLaran. 

Today, Carman Ranch specializes in grass fed beef and is engaged in multiple cooperative habitat and ecosystem restoration projects.  Cory works with local ranchers to explore collective marketing options for locally raised beef to restaurants, wholesalers and other buyers in Oregon.

Judy Olson, Donna Reifschneider, Vanessa Kummer, and Pam Johnson all share something in common— they are the women of “firsts”.

As the first female presidents of some of the major commodity organizations, these women broke new ground in agricultural leadership.  But it wasn’t easy being the only female leaders in a male dominated industry. Ask these four women to talk about their experiences and you will hear similar stories—they all hoped for a deeper network and the opportunity to learn from others. Today, they are all working to ensure that the next generation is right behind them—that they will be the “first but not last”. For them, leadership means being actively engaged with their industries and communities to ensure that women are valued and recognized as equal partners on farms, in businesses and in the board room, and that they share their experiences and expertise to support other women who hope to share their voice and leadership talents.

In agriculture we know that the work of women in our field reaches far beyond one month out of the year and should be celebrated every day. We got such a great response to our Women’s History Month weekly profiles in March that we will now be expanding to a monthly series. We will continue to feature women leaders across agriculture who are opening doors for their peers and contributing to the larger conversation about #womeninag.

To help us get started, this month, we profile Naomi Starkman, the founder and editor-in-chief of Civil Eats. Naomi is also a founding board member and advisor to the Food & Environment Reporting Network. A recovering lawyer, Naomi has worked as a media consultant at The New Yorker and Newsweek magazines and on several farms.

Throughout March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been highlighting inspiring women in agriculture as part of National Women’s History Month.

Recently, I participated in the fourth annual Women in Agriculture – Women, Farms & Food Conference. This year’s theme was “Put Your Best Foot Forward.” During the one-day virtual gathering,  more than 650 women across Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington State were linked via satellite in 28 locations.   This enabled women from all walks of life and every sector of the agriculture supply chain to empower one another.