New Partners for Sustainable Agriculture

The results of the eight oral history interviews and pilot workday interactive mapping activity are presented in narrative here, and in the prototype case studies and model action plans developed in response to the maps. A map is presented in photos of the flip chart work in the hard copy appendices. Three prototype case studies are also in the appendices. The work of grounding the research in women’s stories through oral history interviews and pilot workday mapping exercise highlighted important areas for further research. The pilot project activities produced sufficient results to support continuing research for the student’s dissertation.

Three themes that bear further exploration emerged from analysis of the interviews with women farmland owners.
1. Women lacked the language of conservation even if they cared deeply about taking care of the land for the benefit of future generations. While they spoke knowledgeably about selling crops through crop share arrangements; and in detail about cropping histories, ownership histories; and about complex land title and abstracting issues, they hesitated and searched for words to describe conditions on the land which had precipitated conservation treatments. They were “insiders” to the financial and legal matters of farming but seemed to be “outside” the realm of stewardship activities common to conservation practices. At this phase of the study, the researcher is investigating the role of identity in stewardship and conservation communication as one of the barriers to women’s more active participation (Freire & Macedo, 1987, Andrews et al, 2003).

2. Women with family members in farming felt confident that everything that should be done by way of conservation was being done. Someone else told them when conservation work was needed and how to go about it. In nearly all the cases the “someone else” was the family member charged with the farm operations, or a trusted long-term tenant. Communication from conservationists suggesting that “more should be done” to protect farmland will have to be specific and clear as far as what problems look like and what the proposed solutions produce, and be sensitive to the nature of the relationships women have with their farm operators. Research into these relationships continues (Flora, 2004).

3. A woman without family members in farming had a great deal of difficulty finding someone to do exactly what she wanted done when it came to implementing conservation and in making sure the farming practices protected what she had managed to accomplish. One point to probe further is the extent to which women’s goals for land protection and conservation are understood by others who take action on those goals – from conservation professionals to farm operators and vendors for conservation services. The examination in the next phase of research involves interviews and observations of conservation professionals working with farmland owners, and discourse analysis of texts governing the actions conservation workers can take in doing their work. Of great interest at this time is the possibility that women’s goals may not be expressed adequately (per item 1 above) or are not actionable due to ruling texts and processes which make their goals invisible in some way (Smith, 2005, DeVault, 1999).

The pilot workday yielded results supportive of continuing development of the mapping strategy for barrier identification and the utility of using service mapping as a means to catalyze agency change to benefit women farmland owners and sustainable agriculture in the broader sense. The conservation professionals recruited for the workday were asked to contribute their knowledge of agency procedures during relevant opportunities as they co-developed the prototype case studies, following the lead of the women farmland owners present. They were not asked to teach anything in particular, nor asked to supply documentation to defend their agencies. The women farmland owners were recruited in a letter explaining they would be asked to contribute their experience and knowledge, and further told during the introduction portion of the workday that the research purpose of the day was not to provide an educational opportunity overtly, but to facilitate ways for them to tell their farmland owning experiences.

Consistent with situated learning theory described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (Lave & Wenger, 1990), the work day women farmland owner’s written comments and conversations a month later revealed they had learned from each other and the conservation professionals during the co-production of the service maps for the prototype case studies. Two women wrote about needing “to get more involved in the conservation programs and ask questions instead of leaving it to [others].” Several women wrote specific factual points they learned during the day which came from other women and conservation professionals while co-constructing the service maps. One woman wrote she did not learn anything and was expecting the day to be more informational and about issues rather than about the circumstances which were the focus of the proto type case studies. At this time, there are no plans to further develop the mapping activity as an educational activity for women as part of the dissertation research of the student.

Of more benefit to the on-going research is the response of the conservation professionals to the work day. The conservation professionals reacted to what they heard the women say during the workday in ways suggesting the exchange with women farmland owners was different than they expected and normally experience. One spoke of being “honored to be in the presence of so many women farmland owners with time to really listen to them.” Another wrote, “I am not explaining conservation programs as well as I thought I was.” Written responses to what was most worthwhile during the day included, “real case scenarios that are tracked on paper” and when they “worked…to make up [a fictitious woman] and her special issues – allowed people to interject, then, with several experiences, such as impediments, solutions, and questions.” These responses by the professionals will inform the researcher’s work of interviews, observations, and discourse analysis within the institution of agricultural conservation. If a beneficial shift in perspectives and approach to conservation service delivery is identified and possible after further research, then the communication of professionals and texts that organize their work become the logical target of those new perspectives.

Five model action plans are proposed to address the gap in language and orientation of agricultural conservation programs. The plans focus on communication with women farmland owners, but may have utility for non-traditional farmland owners who are not effectively reached by agency marketing and information. The orientation of the programs bears further research and analysis which is one of the model action plans.

Plan A. Develop Training Materials -- Re-examine the oral history interviews of women farmland owners to determine additional words and phrases used to communicate about their farmland conditions. Additional beneficial data could be gained through interviews with farmland owners who are perhaps recent inheritors who do not have a farming background and also do not “own” the conservation language. Include conservation terms that are used incorrectly or spoken incorrectly such as “CPR” instead of “CRP”. With conservation professionals, determine the most critically needed conservation practices that would be beneficial if more widely adopted (varies by land form for some practices) and search common media discourse for how these are described. Match the women’s words and phrases to conservation terminology used by conservation professionals. A brochure could be developed along the lines of a language translation dictionary with a few pictures to illustrate the conservation concepts, as well as a non-professionals description of what the picture shows. Descriptions such as “rough ground” and “wet area” can be shown in photos, and the corresponding conservation jargon and conservation programs can be presented in plain language.

Plan B. Develop interactive sensitization workshop for conservation service providers -- Convert prototype case studies into decision case studies which can be used to help train conservation service providers who will work with women farmland owners. Decision case studies can contain real details of women farmland owners’ lives and highlight the decision points that are problematic when it comes to participating in conservation programs. The decision case studies should use the language used by women farmland owners who are not extensively involved in the farming operations to provide the most realistic scenarios for training. Small groups of conservation service providers should engage with the decision case studies by drawing the physical dimensions of the decision points on paper where the time lines and locations of “where things happen” are visible. In this way, the institutional time lines and the farmland owners’ time lines can be shown together. Institutional time lines include factors such as annual budget cycles, decision cycles, and time to process normal cases, such as when a board meets once a month to approve landowner applications for assistance. Farmland owner time lines should include not only seasonal farming cycles, and time to find information to fill out forms, but also include the timing challenges of gaining acceptance from family members who live at a distance across time zones and who may know little about the actual business of farming. In this way barriers and confounding factors such as travel time and distances for both conservation professionals and farmland owners can be seen clearly. The decision points in the case studies should emphasize relationships that could be tricky for some women farmland owners to negotiate because of their position in the farming operation.

Plan C. Develop conservation marketing tools -- Conservation outreach materials must also reflect new understandings about women farmland owners to effectively reach them so participation can be increased. A teaching/marketing tool that could be developed would be one to describe the benefits of native prairie systems, a commonly used conservation practice, and their role in water quality and water quantity. Marketing tools commonly use novelty and curiosity to encourage people to engage with the tool and thus receive the message that they may otherwise be unlikely to see. Familiar objects used in an unfamiliar way or in an unfamiliar setting can be effective at inviting listeners and observers to interact with the object and the concept being marketed. A common household object that is used by all social economic groups is a sponge, which is very familiar to women who most often use them. A novelty marketing item that is readily available is a compressed sponge that expands many times its size in contact with water. The compressed sponge wafer is novel because it is an unexpected dimension for a sponge, and yet even when it is expanded, the properties of a sponge are well known and understood. Native prairie systems function on the landscape, much like a sponge as they absorb tremendous amounts of rain water preventing flooding, and provide water cleaning benefits as they trap sediment from overland flow. The compressed sponge wafers can be printed with educational and marketing messages for conservation purposes and distributed through women’s venues, among others.

Plan D. Create new conservation programs or packages -- Some existing agricultural conservation programs and practices can be reconfigured or repackaged to provide the same land, water, and wildlife protection functions and meet other values that landowners may have. This has occurred on a regular basis since the 1985 Farm Bill put wildlife considerations into the design of agricultural practices. An example is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which initially simply took highly erodible land and out of production and put it in permanent grass cover. In the time since, many regionally specific planting mixes have been approved for use on CRP ground to reflect the knowledge and interests of wildlife enthusiasts and yet provide the same soil erosion protection of the original conservation practice tied to farm support. In the same way conservation practices can be reconfigured to reflect the knowledge and interests of diverse farmland owners, including women. An example might be farmstead windbreaks, which in Iowa are promoted through a program called the Resource Enhancement and Protection Act (REAP). Traditional farmstead windbreaks consist of rows of trees and shrubs with space for the plants to expand but also for the convenience and size of farm equipment for mowing and maintenance of the young seedlings. If the windbreak design was not based on the convenience and size of farm equipment it could instead be based on making intriguing areas for children to play, make forts, discover facts about woody plants, and engage in their own intimate play spaces. The function of the windbreak could still block wind and catch snow, protecting the rest of the farmstead, but it could also add value to generations of children to come. The program could be sold as Really Excellent Areas for Playing (REAP).

Plan E. Improve conservation content in workshops -- Agricultural education opportunities for women are now common in Iowa, however, workshop content about soil water conservation is either largely absent or addressed in traditional ways. In light of the theme revealed in the oral history analysis, that women farmland owners who are not operators do not always self identify as making conservation decisions, any soil and water conservation content experts who may be asked to present at these workshops should be alerted to ways to engage women as soil and water conservation stewards. Until programs and policies are reoriented to address the values and concerns of half the farmland owners in the Midwest, certainly it is possible to appeal to those values today with existing programs. Improving conservation programming and marketing may be a gnarly issue today, but given the power of media to help previously unaggregated groups begin to self identify, some creative thought to engaging women as stewards of the land should be possible.