Women and Small Farms Are Topic of Feb. 12 Page Farm & Home Museum Talk
Contact: Patty Henner, 581-4100; Susan Watson, 947-6622, Ext. 5
ORONO — Women operators of small, diversified farms in Maine is the subject of a brown bag lunch lecture at noon, Feb. 12 at the UMaine Page Farm and Home Museum.
The guest speaker for the free event is Susan Watson, a small farms coordinator with the USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Heart of Maine Resource Conservation & Development (RC&D) program in Bangor. She also serves as co-director for the Maine Women and Agricultural Network, helping women make the most of their farms, farm products and woodlots.
Watson owns and maintains a 26-acre farm in Garland, where she manages a flock of sheep and creates fiber art with hand-dyed and felted apparel and hooked rugs. Her work is produced from traditional methods of creating one of a kind fiber pieces that are both functional and an art form. Watson markets specialty meats and value-added products from her farm through the Newport Farmers and Artisan’s Market, which she helped found last year.
Watson works with novice farmers and women interested in discovering innovative ways to produce value-added products from their farms, livestock or woodlots.
The number of small-scale farmers, particularly those operated by women, is increasing in Maine, where more than half of Maine farms operate on 99 acres or less. These farms may include a 1-3-acre vegetable operation catering to consumers wanting organic produce, a 20-acre blueberry operation, a small goat dairy operation or a farm that specializes in fiber production.
Interest in farming as a life style choice and the growth of consumer preference for specialty niche farm products has provided the opportunity for agricultural entrepreneurship to emerge as a catalyst for economic growth, making farming an important component in Maine’s Creative Economy, according to Watson.
Small farms are very local in their service and their impact may play more of a role as energy costs skyrocket. The fastest growing sector in the agricultural community is women and beginner farmers. According to the U.S. Census, across the United States, from 1997 to 2002, the number of farms with women as principal operators increased 13.4 percent.
The Northeast kept pace with an 11.75 percent increase. Women-operated farms represent about 14.5 percent of all farms in the Northeast. Maine is the only Northeastern state among the top 10 in the nation — sixth behind North Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah — for the greatest growth in women-operated farms.
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