Opening the Farm Gate to Women? The Gender Gap in U.S. Agriculture

Abstract:

This article provides an empirical analysis of the gender gap for farming in the United States. Using the 2012 U.S. Census of Agriculture we show that farms operated by women earn forty percent less farm income than farms operated by men after controlling for farm and operator characteristics. These findings indicate that farming is one of the most unequal professions in the United States today. Further, we investigate whether three forms of sustainable agriculture improve incomes for women farmers. We find that only farms engaging in Community Supported Agriculture experience a marked decline in the gender income gap.

Keywords::

• gender inequality
• agriculture
• sustainable farming
• land

JEL Classification Codes::

• B54
• Q01
• J16

Notes

¹ Similarly, military personal and institutionalized individuals are also excluded from traditional analysis on gender wage gaps.

² While there is debate about what sustainable farming means, the literature frequently associates local and organic farming with sustainable agriculture (Adams and Salois 2010; Schnell 2013).

³ For example, grain is often used in economics textbooks as the canonical example of a uniform product.

⁴ Omitted-variable bias may also be present.

⁵ For instance, the 1963 report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women states: “The difference in occupational distribution of men and women is largely responsible for the fact that in 1961, the earnings of women working full time averaged only about 60 percent of those of men working full time.

⁶ Authors’ calculations.

⁷ Principal operator is the term the USDA uses for the “head farmer”—this is the farmer that runs the farm and is in charge of the day-to-day management decisions on the farm.

⁸ In the U.S. Department of Agriculture data, a “full-time operator” is defined as someone spending at least fifty percent or more of their worktime on the farm work. Retired is self-reported. The question asks, “Is this operator retired?”

⁹ The cut-off disproportionately reduces the number of women farmers in our sample, since women farmers are about fifty percent more likely to operate farms with less than $10,000 in sales than male farmers.

¹⁰ Net farm income is the sum of the sales of commodities, other miscellaneous farm-related sales, and government payments (gross farm income), less expenses and depreciation.

¹¹ As a robustness check, we use the number of full-time principal operators rather than number of farmer days as our measure of farming labor. The results of these regressions are qualitatively similar to those we report in this article.

¹² Farm types follow U.S. Department of Agriculture categories, and include: (1) grains, oilseeds, dry beans, dry peas; (2) tobacco; (3) cotton; (4) vegetables, melons, potatoes, and sweet potatoes; (5) fruit, tree nuts, and berries; (6) nursery, greenhouse, floriculture, and sod; (7) cut Christmas trees and short rotation woody crops; (8) other crops and hay; (9) hogs and pigs; (10) milk and other dairy products from cows; (11) cattle and calves; (12) sheep, goats, and their products; (13) horse, ponies, mules, burros, and donkeys; (14) poultry and eggs; (15) aquaculture; (16) other animals and other animal products.

¹³ Due to data limitations, we cannot identify if farms were inherited.

¹⁴ Authors calculations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.” available at http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm (last accessed August 2016).

¹⁵ For example, the USDA has allocated $10 million per year under the 2014 Farm Bill for the 2501 Program, which provides outreach and assistance for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and veteran farmers and ranchers. See http://www.outreach.usda.gov/sdfr/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anders Fremstad

Anders Fremstad is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Colorado State University. Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics and environmental studies in the Division of Social Sciences at the New College of Florida.

Mark Paul

Anders Fremstad is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Colorado State University. Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics and environmental studies in the Division of Social Sciences at the New College of Florida.