Crop of Female Farmers is Growing Across the Region (complete article from source)
Source: Philadelphia Business Journal, by John George
May 04, 2009
Karen Vollmecke said for years and years, whenever she got together with fellow farm owners, the scene was almost the same.
“I was the only woman in a sea of John Deere hats,” said Vollmecke, who with her parents bought Vollmecke Orchards in Chester County 24 years ago.
Women farm owners are still not the norm, but their numbers are growing.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture found, in a recent report, the number of women who are primary farm operators in Pennsylvania surged 41 percent from 6,000 in 2002 to 8,500 — including about 750 in the Philadelphia region — in 2007. Nationally, the number of women farm operators climbed almost 30 percent to 306,209.
Overall, the number of farms in the country increased 4 percent to 2.2 million during the same period, according to the USDA.
Suzanne Milshaw, agricultural program manager for the Chester County Economic Development Council, said the reasons more women are getting into farming vary.
“Some women who are successful in the corporate world are deciding to move onto something more in tune with family life,” Milshaw said. “They start out getting the business skills, then move into farming. Younger people get into farming because they grow up today with more environmental awareness. They’ve always recycled things.”
Milshaw said being a woman in the farming industry does have its challenges, such as access to credit. She noted financial institutions that lend to farmers are used to working with a “certain clientele” that follow more traditional farming models. “Women farmers have been innovators in marketing and are more consumer-oriented,” she said.
The council provides loan programs for farmers and supports educational programs such as Annie’s Project, a program in which Vollmecke participated this past winter.
Vollmecke, a graduate of the Longwood Gardens professional gardener training program, didn’t set out to be a farmer.
“I actually thought I was going to do more horticulture than agriculture,” she said. “I always enjoyed planting vegetables, even as a child, but I never used a tractor.”
That changed when she had the opportunity 25 years ago to buy a 37-acre farm and 150-year-old farmhouse in West Brandywine.
The farm previously grew asparagus and other fruits and vegetables. It was a place where people could pick their own produce. Vollmecke has kept that tradition alive and greatly expanded the variety of fruits and vegetables grown on the farm.
A point of pride for Vollmecke is that her farm grows all its vegetables naturally: no synthetic fertilizers, no pesticides, no herbicides and no genetically modified organisms.
“We are longtime proponents of organic farming,” she said. “We never became certified, so we can’t officially use the ‘O’ word, but we practice organic farming — with maybe some minor infractions. If say, an organic seed isn’t available, we will use a seed that may not be produced organically.”
Vollmecke said they rely heavily on composting to control weeds, and receive much of the mulch they need from the township.
About 12 years ago, she formed a Community Supported Agriculture program where people pay a membership fee and in return come to the farm once a week to receive a share of that week’s just-harvested produce.
The CSA concept originated in the 1960s in Germany, Switzerland, and Japan as a response to concerns about food safety as farm land became increasingly urbanized and food importation grew. Cooperative partnerships were created to support ecologically sound farming.
Vollmecke’s CSA has grown to 160 members.
“Over time, what has happened here is coming to the farm has become a kind of social event,” she said. “People come at the same time every week and share recipes, or just to talk.”
Vollmecke said they also let members get involved in working on the farm, if they want, with simple tasks like planting seeds. “They have a super time, and people get to see where their food is coming from.”
A partial list of the products available through the CSA — most grown at Vollmecke Orchards, but some of which comes from other local farmers — includes, at various times of the year: snow peas, broccoli rabe, spinach, garlic, summer squash, eggplant, peaches, pumpkins, maple syrup and apple cider.
Vollmecke said being one of eight women participating in Annie’s Project at the end of last year helped her learn new business skills.
Annie’s Project — based on the life of a farm woman in Illinois — is a national program designed to empower women farmers to be better business partners through networks and by managing and organizing critical decision-making information.
“It was all about managing all types of risk: marketing, financial, labor,” she said. “Farming is a very risky business. The profit margins are so low that anything, not just the weather, can throw you off.”
The program was adapted to fit the needs of Pennsylvania women farmers by the Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network, which began as a county extension program out of Pennsylvania State University in 2003.
“We had lengthy open discussions on a lot of topics,” she said. “There was a lot of talking and people interrupting and eventually we’d get back to main topic — the kind of thing that’d be dreadful for a lot of guys.”
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