Date of Award

5-2021

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Dr. Nicholas Padilla

Second Advisor

Dr. Lucius F. Hallett, IV

Third Advisor

Dr. Susan Freeman

Keywords

Agriculture, women, mental mapping, Michigan, feminist geography

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Agriculture in Michigan is changing. While the number of farms and farmers continue to decrease, women are increasingly taking on the role of farmer instead of the “farmer’s wife”. The number of female producers increased from 8,275 to 26,059 where the number of producers in Michigan decreased from 56,014 to 47,641 from 2007 to 2017 (USDA, 2007, 2017). Women are becoming the face of farming in Michigan, yet little research examines the impacts of these shifts. In this research, I conduct semi-structured interviews with female farmers throughout lower Michigan beginning in the summer of 2020 to learn more about these women and their lives. Interview questions focus on female farmers’ experiences with agriculture, motivations to farm, attempts to build networks of support for female farmers, and perceptions of their individual farms. The women then take the power of the interview into their own hands to produce a mental map of their farms to literally show what they find important or significant. Mental mapping asks these women to draw their farms, to identify locations they feel are significant, and why they feel these locations are important. This offers another level to my research and offers these women a chance to teach me something about their farm and their lives. The goal of this project is to work with female farmers to understand how they perceive themselves as farmers and to utilize feminist methodologies to examine how women impact agriculture. Given the rising rate of female farmers across Michigan and its impact on the culture of farming, it is imperative that women tell their stories, and geography attends to the shifting dynamics of agriculture today.

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