The Moos Room™

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Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. OG3 here, and we have a guest this week. Amber Roberts is with us, and she is the agribusiness management extension educator for the University of Minnesota Extension. She's also the co-lead for The Women in Ag Network. We're excited to have her here today. She's joining us all the way from Idaho today. How are you doing, Amber?
Amber Roberts: I'm good. Thanks for having me, Joe.
Joe: The place to start is the two questions we ask every guest.
Emily: Oh, sorry. We have to start with the questions. Can I just say, we've really been knocking it out of the park with guests recently, and Amber is just the cherry on top of that. We're excited to have you on here.
Joe: Oh, yes. We're just tooting our own horn. We're doing great. We're doing great.
Emily: Not to toot our own horn, but toot toot.
Joe: Exactly.
Emily: [laughs]
Joe: Two questions we ask every guest. They are very important. Bradley will tell you they have a right answer. The first one we're going to start with is your favorite beef breed.
Amber: I am originally from Montana and I grew up around Black Angus. Black Angus, because in Montana we have Black Angus cows, and then if you want to diversify just a little bit, you might have some Red Angus too.
Joe: Perfect. That is a great answer.
Emily: Oh gosh. I just heard Bradley's heartbreaking.
Joe: All right. Well, that brings the total for everyone counting at home to Hereford's at six, Black Angus's at four, Chianina at one, Brahman at one, Stabilizer at one, and Black Baldy at one.
Emily: Hereford's still have a bit of a stranglehold on it.
Joe: It is surprising but they're out in front. We're catching up, the Black Angus. They're coming back [crosstalk]--
Emily: Joe needs to have more friends on because it's usually guests that you invite that say Black Angus.
Joe: That's true. That's true. I had a feeling that this one might go my way.
Emily: [laughs]
Joe: All right. Same question, but we're talking dairy. Favorite dairy breed?
Amber: Hands down Holstein.
Emily: Okay.
Joe: Sad. It's sad.
Amber: Classic Holstein.
Emily: Joe and Brad are both team Jersey. I said Dutch Belted, which is really more of a heritage breed, but I would also say Holstein because like Dutch Belted, like you said, Amber, just tried and true, classic black and white, timeless. Can't go wrong.
Joe: It's fine. It's fine. Whatever.
Emily: Joe is bitter. I'm just going to tell all of our listeners.
Joe: I'm bitter. I'm trying to be bitter so Bradley doesn't have to be today. That's the idea.
Emily: Oh, that's really nice of you.
Joe: That puts the count at Holstein at five leading the pack, Brown Swiss at four, Jersey at three, Dutch Belted at two, Normandy at one, and Monb�liarde at one. Important questions out of the way. Amber, I think we need to start with your mouthful of a title and your job right now. What do you do? That's the first question.
Amber: That's a great question. As part of our agricultural business management team, what we do across the state of Minnesota is talk with folks about things related to managing their farm and finances. My role in particular, I help put on our farm transition workshops, and then within the Women in Ag Network, our goal there is to connect women, give them an opportunity to network, and also provide them with educational content that can help benefit them if they're in farming or if they're in agribusiness.
We do that in a couple of different ways. Our next big upcoming project is February 3rd. We'll be hosting the 6th Annual Women in Ag Conference. Our first time doing it virtually, but we're excited because this means we can bring even more women from all over the state of Minnesota together to really focus on building bridges and cultivating connections. Bringing people and women together during this really unprecedented time where we don't get as much face-to-face with other female farmers and giving them an opportunity to learn from some really incredible speakers and also get to spend time with each other.
Joe: That's perfect. We're definitely going to get into more women in Ag, and that's what the main focus of today is going to be, is talking about that project and then also talking about some of the work you've done with the needs assessment. I do want to touch on all the other things that you do. The farm transition is a huge topic. To me in practice, there was a constant struggle between generations that I saw, and that was really alleviated when people had a plan. I came to know that having that plan was pretty rare. Is that still something that's an issue?
Amber: Absolutely. When it comes to farm transition, in the next 20 years, we're going to see 70% of our farmland change hands, which means we have a big job to make sure that the retiring generation is ready and has a plan on how they want to transition that farmland, and also making sure that we're equipping that incoming farmer, that next generation, with the tools that they need to be successful stepping into that role.
Creating a transition plan is so important, but often gets put off. There's all sorts of reasons why it can be uncomfortable to talk about transition planning. A lot of those have to do with we don't want to face our own mortality. We don't want to think from the younger generation about mom and dad not being on the farm, but having a plan is the key to success.
Unfortunately, myself and my predecessors have been hosting these workshops across the state of Minnesota for 19 years now. Six months later, we survey those folks that come out and spend six hours with us to get farm transition education, and six months later, over 85% of them still don't have a plan put into place. Nationwide, when it comes to completed plans, less than 3% of farmers have a completed farm transition plan. Really something that's important, but also a topic that a lot of farmers put off.
It's hard when you're doing the everyday things that need to happen on the farm. Little emergencies pop up all the time, and it can be easy to put off that transition planning, but really critical if you want to ensure that your farm will continue on to the next generation. If we're talking passing it down from first generation to second generation, only about 30% or a third of farms successfully transition to that second generation. Then when we go from the second to the third, that number goes down to 14%, and when we go beyond that third generation, less than 3% of family farms are able to successfully keep it in the family and running financially after that third generation.
Emily: Wow. Those are some crazy numbers. I know that there's a lot of farms that don't have transition plans, but I didn't realize it was that few. I know in my work in farm stress, and all of that, that is something that we cite as one of the most common and yet unique stressors in farming is that transition plan, because it is something that's business related, there's emotional ties to it, like you said, Amber, facing our own mortality. Sometimes people just don't want to give up control or then they feel useless.
I've worked with farms that have gone through the process and done so successfully and they all say, "It was so worth the work." I think that's another reason people don't do it, is these plans take years to get fully finalized and put together, and even then they could change just based on what's happening in the world and what happens with other family members, and things.
Joe: What I've found is that often the farms know more than they think they know about how they want to do things and how that should work. It's just never written down anywhere. There's often miscommunication about expectations or different things that will happen between the generations. Even just having the conversation at first, the first step is just talking about it out loud and making sure everyone's on the same page that way.
Again, writing it down and getting everything figured out and getting all the financials of it figured out and smoothed doubt over a long period of time, it's a long time to do, but incredibly important. You said control, and that's, I think, probably the biggest factor for me is seeing that giving up control to the next generation is really tough to do, especially when it's not established what your role is going to be on farm still and how you're still going to be involved. I think that's, at least when I've talked to farmers, the biggest scare for that older generation is they're going to become irrelevant and not needed anymore when in fact they're probably needed more than ever as that new generation takes over.
Amber: The other thing I'd add to that is there are so many decisions that have to be made when it comes to a transition plan that it can be or seem extremely overwhelming, but just starting with those initial conversations. Like you said, Joe, you know what you want to happen for your farm. You can rely on your attorney, if you hire a lawyer to help you craft those legal documents that you'll eventually need, but what can help you get so much further in this process is knowing, "Here are our goals, here's what we want as a family to happen for our transition plan," and then relying on that team of experts that you have to help figure out some of those more complicated business structure issues, tax issues, financial issues, but just taking that first step of getting down in writing, "These are our goals. This is what we want to happen for our farm's transition," can help to ensure that you're part of that small percentage that is successful in transitioning to the next generation.
Joe: All right. I think we're going to quit talking about farm transition there.
Emily: That's a whole another episode, right?
Joe: Oh, yes. We probably will have to have a--
Emily: Series of episodes.
Joe: Yes, a bunch of episodes on that. It might even be a series but it's important. You should talk to whoever you can about it to get started and make sure, yes, it's not just floating out there somewhere where everyone's talked about it. It should be written down, and everyone should figure it out. All right. Let's move on to the Women in Ag Network. Super important program. Important to point out that Emily is one of the OG-
Emily: Yes.
Joe: -people that started Women in Ag Network. Emily, briefly before Amber jumps in and tells us what's going on now, tell us the brief, brief story of how we got going.
Emily: Emphasis on brief. I will say this, when we first sat down, myself and our former colleagues, Betty Berning and Pauline Van Nurden, I remember we went out to lunch, and literally, it was a sketched out on the back of the napkin type thing, that program and what the Women in Ag Network is today, vastly different. It's one of those things that it's cool that this program is so much bigger and better than we ever originally imagined it could be.
When we first started, we were just really looking at, how do we create some social gathering for farm women, for female farmers that they can get education and network with each other? It started as, we're going to have this course that's held for eight weeks, and then it will also include dinners. What we started with and what it is are very, very different. It's just so exciting to see where this program has gone and continues to go, charting new territory in this space.
Joe: Amber, tell me how it's the same and different now as we move into almost-- or this might even come out in 2021.
Amber: A lot of what Emily, Betty, and Pauline started is still there. The Women in Ag Network is still heavily focused on bringing women together for that networking aspect. That's so essential to give our female farmers, our women who work in agribusiness, the chance to connect with each other, which is why we keep the word "network" in the title of our group of women.
The other portion that's still the same is we still provide educational content that's research-based to women. How we do it looks a little different than what the program originally started with. We primarily do it through a Facebook page that we've run, newsletters. Every single year, we host an annual conference. Then we do a summer farm tour that women can attend. 2020, it looked a little different. We did it virtually. Hopefully, in the future, we will be able to go back to in person farm tours.
Joe: Tell me how Annie's Project fits into all of this.
Amber: Annie's Project is one of our partners. We have several Annie's Projects that will be hosted across the state of Minnesota this year, including one that will be a virtual one-hour Annie's inspired in St. Cloud. Annie's Project is really focused on creating a small cohort of local women and providing them with the five foundations of risk management education. They do that for three hours a week, for six weeks. Over 6 weeks, not 16.
Joe: That'd be a long time. I've been involved with Annie's Project. I really enjoy it. I have a great time every time I present there. It's really fun to be in a room where it's a small group and everyone's super engaged. It's really fun because a lot of the cohort knows each other. It's really fun to really get into details talking about specific farms because a lot of the participants have been on each other's farms, and that's really, really, really fun to do in that small group setting.
We've heard how Women in Ag Network got started. We've heard what it's doing now. What's upcoming for this year? Conference in February, February 3rd. We'll have the link here in the show notes so you can get to that. That link in the Women in Ag Network page. The big thing that I want to touch on is this needs assessment survey that Amber did. I've heard very brief snippets about it. Amber, take it away and tell me how it got started, why you saw a need for it, and then we'll get into the results.
Amber: Great. Why we decided to do a needs assessment was the Women in Ag Network was established over five years ago. In that time, we haven't taken the time to assess, what are some of the current issues that women in agriculture in Minnesota are facing, and what do they want to know more about? It just seemed like the right time to reach out to women across the State of Minnesota and ask them what their needs are, what do they want to learn more about, and what role does the Women in Ag Network currently play in helping to provide education and networking opportunities, and what role would they like to see us play in the future?
Joe: Tell us about the results, and get into the nitty-gritty of the surprising things that you found.
Amber: Sure. We'll do a highlights reel of what the results of our needs assessment was. In total, we ran the needs assessment through our Facebook page for over a month and a half. We had 80 women from across the State of Minnesota fill out the needs assessment. Some of the questions that we asked them that were really telling was we gave them a list of 20 proficiency areas. This included everything from knowledge of how to access loans and grants, direct marketing knowledge, estate planning, keeping up with legislation, managing farm finances. What we found is out of this list of 20 proficiencies, when we asked women to rank themselves as either low, moderate, or high proficiency, the group as a whole on average did not rank themselves as moderately proficient in any of these categories.
They ranked themselves between low and moderate, which was surprising because on average, this group of women that we surveyed had over 14 years of experience in agriculture. Now, when we began to narrow it down to smaller and smaller groups, so when we looked at just farmers, we then started to see some areas where they would rank themselves as moderately, but for our women who were under the age of 50, there are only two proficiencies for those groups for female farmers that they said, "We are moderately proficient," and it was in only 2 of those 20 categories. They were family communication and managing personal finances.
Then when we looked at that older group, we had to narrow it down all the way to female farmers between the ages of 51 and 60 to even get more than two categories that they on average consider themselves moderately proficient in. What this tells us, this is a highly-educated group of women who have been working in agriculture for a very long time, and more than likely, they aren't actually between low and moderately proficient. We find that they're ranking themselves, self-ranking, as low proficiency or as moderate proficiency.
Joe: That's the snippet that I heard was this fact that this group of highly-skilled women, who are clearly probably moderate to high proficiency in almost all of these categories, are ranking themselves a lot lower. Huge question. I can't speak to it, but for you and Emily, tell me why.
Emily: [chuckles] You sure you want to do that, Joe?
Joe: I want to get into this because I find it very-- well, I find it surprising the lack of confidence, especially given my experience with very, very highly-skilled, proficient female farmers.
Emily: The thing that really jumped out at me about what Amber just said was how for that group of under 50, the top two were communication and personal finance. The two things that I would say many people associate with the traditional concept of-- This is my least favorite phrase of all time, "the farm wife". You're not married to a farm. Anyways, so I would say that I think a lot of that is just heavily steeped in tradition. We need to face the facts and there have been times in our history where men and women are viewed differently. I think that for a lot of women, we are still trying to find that confidence and still trying to find our place and learning how to establish credibility. While that is something that I said to you guys off-air before is you know more than you think, but you don't know it all.
Really, that no more than you think, that's something that I say to a lot of people, and I know of just within extension, I've worked with other female colleagues and they'll go, "Well, I I can't really speak on this topic. Well, I don't really know that much." I'm the first one to just tell them, "No, that's too bad. You're speaking, you don't get an option." They always knock it out of the park. I think it's really important to see that yes, we are just going to downplay ourselves, that it has a lot to do with how we were raised and the societies that we live in, and the structures that we grew up with.
Agriculture especially is very traditional and is one of those occupations where there is such strong family ties that I think you see it and it's a little bit more prevalent. It was always well, the wife had to take care of the kids and make all the meals and she probably helped on the farm. I think of my own mom, she was raising five kids but she still went out and fed the cows and would help with milking, all of that. Sorry, this is a diatribe here, but to me, that's what I think of, and also it's like I said, when I have colleagues that don't have that confidence in them, you got to lift people up and you got to give them those opportunities.
I think that it's something that both men and women can be doing is making sure we're going, "Hey, let's bring you up. Let's make sure that you aren't just taking the backseat." I personally I'm a go-getter, assertive, very much an achiever type and so I have no problem being like stepping up to the plate and doing it, but I recognize not everyone is like that. We need to make sure that people that have that as a strength are helping bring other people along with them.
Joe: Amber, what's your take?
Amber: I would agree with a lot of what Emily said, and I'd add to it too. Part of it is who do we define as a farmer? That has historically been an issue and is starting to be addressed and plays into this confidence factor. What I mean by that is, I worked for a dairy co-op for a little while and we saw this play out in who would attend our annual convention dinner. We would have 100 farmers and a hundred plus ones. Who were those a hundred plus ones? Well, most of the time it was the farmer's spouse.
For the majority of those spouses, they worked on farm full-time with their husbands or they would work on the farm and be involved in the farm some way. When we begin to shift our language and instead of saying, and only leaving room for a farmer has to fit this specific description, we can change it from 100 farmers and a hundred plus ones to 200 farmers are coming to our annual convention dinner.
The other thing I want to say that we've seen a shift in, in 2012, in the census of agriculture, we had a much narrower definition of who the primary farmer was. In 2017, we saw this huge increase in the number of female farmers. Now, we didn't magically get a whole very large increase in the number of female farmers in Minnesota. Instead what had happened is we had broadened our definition of who a farmer was, and we had now allowed for females on the farm to also be considered primary and principal operators.
We said, you no longer have to select one, you can say that you have two principal operators on your farm. By doing this, we saw a 65% increase in the number of women listed as a primary producer in Minnesota in 5 years, a 65% increase. I think that this also plays into the issue is that historically women haven't been considered on paper in their co-ops in general, part of that primary farmer, that decision maker, someone who's influential on the farm, and by shifting those definitions to be inclusive and to say, yes, you can have two principle decision makers on your farm. It opens up this opportunity for women to begin to feel more confident.
Joe: That's long answer as to why confidence isn't as high as it should be.
Emily: You should have known you were going to get an earful, Joe.
Joe: Yes, and I wanted it. It's really important to talk about. Again, the whole thing was very surprising to me given my personal experience with female operators in the agricultural community. I have several that are jumping out to me right now. Yes, I couldn't ever imagine them saying they weren't proficient at all of those things you listed because of what I've seen them do and accomplish. Shout out Christine Rude, if you're listening, one of my favorite clients, one of the hardest-working clients I've ever seen. It makes me sad that there isn't more confidence in obvious skills.
Bradley: Sometimes we think that we only see this in the United States, but for those of you that are-- what's interesting that you see the same phenomenon in other parts of the world as well. It's not just this is happening in the US. I've seen it in France. Actually, in France and Sweden when I've been to, there's a lot of women that have helped out on the dairy farm in Sweden that are actually making the decisions.
I've been to some of those farms and they're the major player on the farm and are doing a lot of the work and running of the business. I think that's important to note too, that it's not just a US thing. It's not just a US thing. Sometimes we get close-minded and think that it's only happening in the US and stuff, and it is other places around the world as well.
Joe: Yes, definitely not just an issue here. We've gone over why it's like it is now, and we briefly got into the next step which is what do we do about it? I'm interested not just-- Emily told us it's men and women who are willing to put themselves out there, have the confidence bringing everybody with them, but what else can we do? What else is there to do besides the things that you guys have already described?
Emily: My biggest thing would be if you are somebody who works in industry, a sales rep or something, if you happen upon a woman on the farm, don't ask where the decision maker is or where the husband is or where their dad is. Don't do that, please. Please don't do that. That's a little thing, but a subtle way. I think ties into just this bigger part of don't make assumptions and then when a female says, "Yes, I am the farmer here." Don't go, "Oh, wow."
It shouldn't be an anomaly. I know just as being a woman in agriculture and starting in agriculture, fresh out of college, 22 years old, and people walking into the office back when I was in the county, and they go, "Well, the last time I was here I talked to a guy, or, well, where's the gentleman who was here last time?" I just go, "I replaced him. What can I help you with?" Don't make assumptions.
It's just realizing that we are all capable and credible and like I already said, taking each other along for the ride, lifting each other up, and creating those opportunities. You don't know what a person's capable of or what they're passionate about until you really talk to them. To me it's like, there's no difference there. If you're somebody who loves agriculture and loves what you do and works hard, it doesn't matter. You can be a man or a woman, an alien, I don't care. Boy, you really got me fired up here. I'm trying to hold myself back.
Joe: I know. I've always been amazed that people can say those things and put their foot way into their mouth and they're not embarrassed by it. Doesn't do it. It doesn't move them at all. It's just amazing to me that you could put your foot in your mouth that hard and not feel anything about it and not change anything about your own actions. Maybe some people do, but it doesn't seem to affect people that much like it should. Amber, what else can we do?
Amber: I think one of the other things that we should talk about here that we found in our needs assessment that's important to point out is we also asked our female respondents to rank a set of issues, different farm issues that might affect them. Number one, finance cash flow issues. No surprise there. Number two, 41% of women ranked not being taken as seriously as men as a considerable or very considerable issue.
This was the number two issue that women in our survey ranked was women not being taken as seriously. That can play into this confidence factor. What can we do when it comes to encouraging our fellow female farmers, our fellow women who are in agriculture? I think from the farmers' stands, if you are going to an event that you think could be beneficial to them too and you know a female farmer, invite them to come. I don't see nearly as many female farmers when I do land rent meetings or transition meetings as I would like to see. Invite them to come and create that inviting space.
The other thing I would say that is important to think about is representation matters. When we're thinking about the programming that we're creating, are we creating a space that women feel like they can come to? Even thinking about the images that we're projecting, the words that we're using are important. From 2017 to 2018, a study at a Utah State University looked at the USDA and some of their social media feeds to see in those pictures that they were posting, were there females involved? What role did they play in those photos? Were they the primary focus? Were they secondary? Then were they actively portrayed as somebody who's a farmer or somebody who is an Ag professional?
What they found is 40% of those photos from 2017 to 2018, so this is a very recent issue. 40% were male only. Then of those photos that included females, males were four times more likely to be playing an active role, so the person that's doing something in the photo, and 60% of those photos had males as the primary spot of focus. Even though we might not think about it, representation, the images that we're putting out, those matter as well.
Joe: I am going to ask you as a question, I don't know if we will include it because it's something that Emily said earlier. She said the term farm wife is not a term she appreciates. I see that kind of terminology on social media all the time. There are accounts that are held by women in agriculture and that's how they identify on their account. Is that a problem?
Emily: I will say this. I said I personally don't like that phrase or that term, and I know several other women who don't as well. I know that some people embrace it, they embrace that role as farm wife. In my mind, that's fine, but we need to be cognizant that there are people who like and dislike certain things. Can we use other phrasing, other terminology? I don't think it's bad or it's something like, "This is wrong." It's just for me personally, I don't like it. I don't use it. I don't say it. I wouldn't want somebody to say it to me. I don't know. [chuckles]
Joe: I was just curious because that's something I see a lot is maybe not that exact terminology, but something very similar. I see it all the time on social media as the title of the account. It was surprising to me, especially when you start looking at a profile or an account and they're a farmer. They're just a farmer but they're identifying as the farmer's wife.
Amber: Going through my agricultural program in college, many of my other peers who are females would say, "I just want to be a ranch wife." I heard that a lot and I don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with it. When you would ask them, "Why do you want to be a ranch wife?" "Oh, I love cattle. I love calving. I love doing X, Y, and Z." Inherently what they were describing was not the wife portion of it, but they wanted to be a rancher.
I think if you find power in the term ranch wife, farm wife, that's great, but a lot of what they're doing there is that they actually love the agricultural lifestyle. That's just the term that they've given to it to justify. Some of that might be because if you don't have a ranch to go back to, the easiest way to get one is to marry into a family that does have a ranch or that does have a farm that you can operate. I think the question there is, it's a term that they find to describe themselves, which is great.
Not everybody likes to use that terminology, but what makes you passionate about being a farm wife or a ranch wife? Is it the wife portion? Is it your wonderful relationship or is there also something there that has to do with making decisions on the farm, being around animals, producing and growing food?
Joe: Well, I think that's good to know that for some it might be an empowering term and for some, it might be kind of a trigger like for Emily. That's good to know. It's not something that I knew and I'm glad I know it now. That'll help me [crosstalk]--
Emily: Amber put it much more eloquently than I did.
Joe: Well, that's why we invited her today.
Emily: I will admit.
Amber: I know what you're talking about though, Emily, because I heard it. In my graduating class, we had 37 people in undergrad and I believe four of us were females and three, not including myself, wanted to be ranch wives. Direct quotes. I hear it a lot.
Joe: Where are we going next? That's what I had.
Emily: I feel like we could wrap it.
Joe: Well, thank you, Amber, for being on today. We really appreciate it. I think we're out of time. Lots to think about. I'm glad we had you today to talk about this. Sorry to all the listeners it got a little serious, but it's something everyone needed to hear. Maybe we'll have you back talk about farm transition.
Amber: Yes, please do. Thanks for having me.
Joe: You guys know the drill, scathing rebuttals, comments, questions they go to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: Please check out our website extension.umn.edu. If you want more information about the Women in Ag Network, you can go to z.umn.edu/wagn. Check us out on Facebook at UMN Beef and at UMN Dairy. We are also on Twitter now, just created an account for The Moos Room. The Moos Room is on Twitter @umnmoosroom.
Emily: While you're at it, you can also follow @umnfarmsafety.
Joe: Perfect. All right, that's all we had for today. Thank you, everybody. We'll catch you next week.
Emily: Bye.
Joe: Bye.
[music]
Joe: What do I need to wrap again? I'm three pages in on my notebook. Okay, z.umn.edu/wagn, right?
Emily: Yes.
Bradley: I can spell that for you.
[laughter]
Emily: The hell you can.
Joe: Bradley has trouble spelling on the podcast.
Bradley: Oh my God.
[00:38:12] [END OF AUDIO]

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