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“Our market is our community”: women farmers and civic agriculture in Pennsylvania, USA

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Abstract

Civic agriculture is characterized in the literature as complementary and embedded social and economic strategies that provide economic benefits to farmers at the same time that they ostensibly provide socio-environmental benefits to the community. This paper presents some ways in which women farmers practice civic agriculture. The data come from in-depth interviews with women practicing agriculture in Pennsylvania. Some of the strategies women farmers use to make a living from the farm have little to do with food or agricultural products, but all are a product of the process of providing a living for farmers while meeting a social need in the community. Most of the women in our study also connect their business practices to their gender identity in rural and agricultural communities, and redefine successful farming in opposition to traditional views of economic rationality.

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Notes

  1. Three of the women we interviewed were operators of farms with more than $250,000 in sales, but had only recently expanded to this size. We included them because we felt they would be able to demonstrate avenues toward growth and expansion of smaller farming operations.

  2. Institutional Review Board authorization was granted for this project (IRB # 21532) and consent to participate was obtained through the signing of informed consent forms. All names are pseudonyms, and other potentially identifying information was removed.

Abbreviations

CSA:

Community supported agriculture

ERS:

USDA Economic Research Service

PA-WAgN:

Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network

PASA:

Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture

USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank United States Department of Agriculture National Research Initiative and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education programs for the financial support of WAgN; all the members of PA-WAgN; the members of the PA-WAgN working group, Jill Findeis, Ann Stone, Linda Moist; and especially the women farmers who participated in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Georgia, 210 Field Street, Athens, GA, USA

    Amy Trauger

  2. Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Carolyn Sachs & Kathy Brasier

  3. Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Mary Barbercheck

  4. Cooperative Extension Administration, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Nancy Ellen Kiernan

Authors
  1. Amy Trauger
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  2. Carolyn Sachs
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  3. Mary Barbercheck
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  4. Kathy Brasier
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  5. Nancy Ellen Kiernan
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Correspondence to Amy Trauger.

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Trauger, A., Sachs, C., Barbercheck, M. et al. “Our market is our community”: women farmers and civic agriculture in Pennsylvania, USA. Agric Hum Values 27, 43–55 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9190-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9190-5

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