“We Don’t Equal Even Just One Man”: Gender and Social Control in Conservation Adoption

Abstract

Women own or co-own approximately half of the farmland in Iowa, United States, yet researchers are only beginning to study these landowners’ social relationships in relation to their land. This study analyzes qualitative data collected in Iowa through a series of meetings hosted by the Women, Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN). I find that social control through exclusion constrains women landowners’ access to information about and implementation of conservation. Specifically, I identify how women landowners experience the social processes of boundary maintenance and othering in land management. These processes create barriers to conservation adoption and maintain gendered agricultural landscapes. The women who participated in WFAN’s conservation programs express their experience of and resistance to dominant narratives as they attempt to create landscape change. These findings highlight the importance of further study of inequality processes and their relation to control of farmland if conservation goals are to be met.

Keywords:

• Gender
• landowners
• women
• agriculture
• social control
• conservation

Notes

Acknowledgments

I thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I thank Rebecca Christoffel for her assistance in research design and data collection. I thank David Schweingruber and the Iowa State University grounded theory seminar participants for their support throughout the coding and theoretical development process. I am deeply appreciative of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network and the women who entrusted their stories to me. This article builds upon a chapter of my dissertation. Although the information presented here has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under an assistance agreement, it does not reflect the views of the Agency.

Notes

1 Plaintiffs initially filed Love v. Vilsack in 2000, alleging gender-based discrimination by the USDA in connection to farm loans (Feder and Cowan 2013). Their appeal was consolidated with the Garcia v Vilsack appeal, brought forward by Latinx farmers, but was denied class action status in 2010 (Ibid). In 2011, the USDA and Department of Justice developed a voluntary claims process of $1.33 billion that concluded in 2013 (Ibid); however, 47% of the successfully filed claims were denied due to purported fraud concerns (Love v Vilsack 2016).

2 In crop-share rental agreements, landowners receive a specified percentage of the harvested crop as rent, thus sharing the market risk between landowner and tenant farmer. In cash rental agreements, landowners rent to farm tenants for a specified dollar amount by the acre or for the entire farm and usually do not participate in costs or management of the farming operation (Drake Agricultural Law Center 2018)

3 CRP is the acronym for the Conservation Reserve Program, a voluntary federally funded Farm Bill program offering a yearly rental payment for a period of 10–15 years in exchange for removing “environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and planting species that will improve environmental health and quality” (“Conservation Reserve Program,” n.d.). Lands entered into the program must have been previously in agricultural production (e.g. an existing native prairie remnant cannot be entered into the program).

4 Annie’s Project is a 501(c)(3) national nonprofit organization providing educational programs focusing on farm business management for agricultural women started in 2003 and coordinated through land grant university cooperative extension programs in 33 states.

5 Women, Land and Legacy is a USDA education and outreach program coordinated through Women, Food and Agriculture Network. The program began in 2004 through a collaboration among USDA, WFAN and Iowa State University Extension staff in Iowa and currently hosts networking opportunities in 30 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded through Environmental Protection Agency Wetland Program Development [Grant #EPA-R7WWPD-11-001].