Young. Woman. Farmer.
Forging a Path for Healthy Food and Vibrant Communities
“I don’t think people understand how difficult it is for young farmers to get started,” explains Emily Best, General Manager of Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative. “I’m not saying it can’t be done. But it’s hard. And once you get set up, it can be a real struggle to be small enough to have a life and not work 15 hour days. It’s tough to pay yourself, let alone helpers.”
She is relaying a story of one co-op member who after doing the math discovered she was making less per hour than her employees. It’s an interview Emily graciously agreed to as part of a series of interviews with young women who’ve taken up the call to farm.
Emily’s cooperative has about 35 member-growers in south central Pennsylvania about an hour from Harrisburg that specializes in fresh fruits and vegetables. They sell to restaurants, retailers, farmers markets and CSAs in the Baltimore-Washington metro region. They also facilitate sales between growers so each can offer a wider range of options at their farmers market stalls.
I reached out to her because I wanted to learn first-hand what it’s like to be a young woman and a farmer today. I chose Emily because she lives and works in rural Pennsylvania which I imagine is similar to where I grew up in upstate New York, surrounded by small farms and family-owned dairy operations. It’s a rural community of back roads, not much more than a post office and a gas station, a place that holds on stubbornly in spite of neglected infrastructure, an aging population, and limited opportunity.
I also reached out to her because she looked tough but thoughtful in her Twitter profile picture. Her tweets were about the big issues facing farmers, about policy and the nitty-gritty of farming, as well as promoting her co-op’s offerings. She looked like she worked really hard but that she was also at ease with her choices. She looked determined to make them work, which made her look wise beyond her years.
A Long Journey
Emily didn’t grow up on a farm or even in a rural area. She did, however, always have an interest in the natural world and protecting it. In college, she was active around environmental issues. After college, during a stint working overseas in Guinea, West Africa, she saw first-hand the world of subsistence agriculture and global food security issues.
“Being there — it really opened my eyes to a lot of things I hadn’t thought about or understood,” she explains. “I met a lot of people who were struggling to get by and just feed their families.”
She returned to the US for graduate school and studied International Development with a focus on agriculture and economy. She would go back overseas once more before deciding to return to the United States and, in her words, “see what sort of impact I could have closer to home, really wrap my head around the issues, and understand the work and lifestyle.”
Emily spent four growing seasons working directly on a farm. These days, however, much of her time is spent at the computer staying in touch with co-op growers and customers (or on the telephone, in the case of the one-third of her coop’s members who are Amish). She describes her job as communicating and thinking about “how we can improve what we do.”
Huge Challenges
Young people interested in farming face a multitude of challenges from high land prices to lack of access to health care.
According to the National Rural Health Association, the problems of rural health care are interrelated and confounding:
- Too few physicians are willing to locate and practice there.
- Rural residents have lower rates of employer-provided health coverage.
- Rural areas experience higher poverty rates (Nearly 24% of rural children live in poverty.)
- Specialized care from dentistry to mental health services is highly limited.
- From car accidents to gunshot wounds, rural residents experience a higher proportion of accidental injuries.
- Rates of chronic diseases like hypertension are higher in rural areas.
- Rural communities have faced a rash of hospital closures, and nearly 700 more rural hospitals are at risk for closure.
“I think it really surprised me how stark it is,” says Emily. “For anything more than a primary care visit, you’ll have to drive 45 minutes or more… The doctors here do their best. Still you don’t know if you’re getting the best care, the right level of care, the type of care you’d get in Washington or in Harrisburg.”
Greater Rewards
It’s a difficult life that comes with rewards that are significant enough to draw women like Emily.
“I always worked the farmers markets, and I loved it…seeing the literal fruits of my labor sold to people who were so happy to be buying them,” says Emily. She also felt a special joy from working in the greenhouses growing baby transplants, planting seeds and then a few days later seeing their little shoots sprout from the soil.
But there seems to be a more significant draw that she hints at, explaining simply, “There was no ambiguity to the work. It’s healthy; it’s local; it’s good food.”
Policy to Support Young Farmers
Recently, Emily has been working with the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), a group that “supports practices and policies that will sustain young, independent and prosperous farmers now and in the future.”
NYFC is advocating to add small-scale farming to the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Created in 2007, it covers low-paying, critical-need professions, including teachers, nurses, certain doctors, public interest attorneys, government employees, and nonprofit professionals. Once enrollees make 10 years of student loan payments, their federal loan debt is forgiven.
There are complicated issues facing farmers, like what Emily calls “the real cost of food” and the impact of big organic suppliers and international trade deals. Adding farming to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is not one of them. It’s a step that would clearly help a lot of young people who want to make farming a sustainable life, people like Emily.
Looking Forward
I asked what fruit or vegetable she most looked forward to eating this season. Emily tells me that everyone is anxiously awaiting strawberries, but she is most looking forward to sweet corn. She and I spent a bit waxing on about the amazingness of its kernels bursting with juicy sweetness.
I remember the sound of my mother husking sweet corn on our front steps, me helping to pull the bits of corn silk from each perfect ear. The skin on my nose and cheeks tight from too much sun. The feeling of the upstate air cooling so quickly as the sun passed below the treeline. This is the part of rural life I love and miss.
“I had never thought to do this before,” says Emily, “but I learned you can eat sweet corn raw. You don’t need to steam or boil it. It’s so sweet, it’s almost like fruit. When I worked on the farm, I’d eat it just like that.”
Emily is also looking forward to continuing to grow as a manager and a voice for her co-op.
“Local food is all about strengthening your own community, region and state,” she explains, “keeping people doing what they want to do, support their families, doing what they’re good at. No matter what the work is that day, I’m doing something that’s a good thing. It’s increasing the goodness in the world.”
