Meet Farmers Jane

My friend Temra Costa is one cool lady. She knows how to make her own goat cheese, a skill she picked up last year when she was in France harvesting organic wine grapes. She’s an accomplished cob builder and keeps an impressive backyard garden, which this spring is bursting with artichokes, lemons, mustard greens, and the first blush of raspberries. Each week she co-hosts a radio show called The Queens of Green with Deborah Koons Garcia, the filmmaker behind the Future of Food. Here in the food-obsessed Bay Area, no sustainable food happening is complete without the ever-stylish Temra working the crowd.

Oh, yeah, and she’s about to publish her first book — Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat. The book profiles 26 women who are at the cutting edge of creating ecologically sustainable and humane food systems in the United States. Some of the subjects are bold-faced names within the organic food movement: chef and cookbook author Deborah Madison; Iowa farmer Denise O’Brien, a past president of the National Family Farm Coalition; or Elizabeth Henderson of Peacework Farm, one of the first farms in the US to organize a CSA. Others — such as urban farmers Novella Carpenter and Erika Allen — are up-and-comers. Many, like pioneering biodynamic farmer Gloria Decatur, are busy with their hands in the soil. All are, in their own way, sowing the seeds of what Alice Waters has called this “delicious revolution.”

And yet, despite their accomplishments, many of these heroines haven’t gotten the recognition they deserve. In the introduction to her book, Temra writes: “Women … have long been underrepresented in the publish sphere about the sheer amount of work they do, at home and outside the home, in food planning and preparation, while advocating for a healthier food system and environment.”

Of course, a similar criticism could be made for just about every other sector of society. Women’s roles in our political system, our media establishment, and our businesses are routinely overlooked or undervalued. The omission is all the more glaring when it comes to our food system, given how women are in the vanguard of the sustainable food movement. According to Temra’s survey, 61.5 percent of the staff and 60 percent of the executive directors at what she calls the “top 15 national nonprofits focusing on sustainable agriculture issues” are women. At the same time, the latest USDA Census of Agriculture reports, women farmers are growing in number. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of farms operated by women increased by 30 percent.

But as Temra sees it, women’s contribution to the sustainable food movement goes beyond these figures. Women are the heart and soul of the new agrarianism because “feminine values” are central to the emerging green economy.

“There’s a feminine connection to sustainability in general,” Temra told me during a phone conversation the other day. “I am not the first person to talk about the femininity of the green economy. Paul Hawken has written about the entire holistic way of thinking that is emerging in communities. It’s relationship-based, it keeps future generations in mind, health, and long-term viability. Women think more with the heart in mind. Women think differently than men for sure.”

A great example of that difference is Emily Oakley and her partner, Mike, of Three Springs Farm in Oklahoma. Emily’s commitment to working the land is fueled by her desire to feed her community. “Every year I almost start crying from happiness because we’ve achieved so many relationships,” she told Temra. “What keeps me going is the human element with what we do. Someone out there is going to eat the food we grow; it will be someone’s dinner and we know that person.”

Lovely sentiments, to be sure. Only they have a real payoff. Emily says they make more money when she works the farmers market rather than when Mike does it alone because she is more interested in making a connection with customers. “It’s such a stereotype,” she told Temra. “But there are many truths … You have to smile, be approachable and friendly.”

Another feminine value that has helped foster the increase in female growers is women’s commitment to mentoring one another. Dru Rivers, a pioneer of the organic movement and a co-owner of California’s Full Belly Farm, is the perfect example. Over the decades, she has served as a role model for hundreds of young female farm apprentices, many of whom have gone on to start their own farms.

“I know all of these women who have left here and who are going on to farm,” Rivers told Temra. “They love getting their hands callused. It’s so fun for me to see it and watch women go through that and know that they are really capable.”

Not just capable, I would say, but essential — the tip of the fork when it comes to revolutionizing our food system. If you want to know who’s driving the sustainable food system, then Farmer Jane is a must read. The inspiring stories you read there will, if nothing else, help you remember why we call it Mother Nature.