Would I have been a farmer had anyone pushed me toward it? This is a question I asked myself when I attended the 91st National FFA Conference and Expo in Indianapolis.

Being a woman who grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s in the midst of the Equal Rights Amendment debates makes me very in tune with women’s issues. I want to see young women get the opportunity to do whatever they want.

I decided to focus on women at the conference. What were they doing there? What were they learning? What did they want to do after high school? My first conversation was with an ag teacher from Indiana who shepherded a group of 12 students to the conference. She shared a lunch table with me.

She was also a farmer. She had taken over her family’s farm after neither of her brothers wanted the job; however, it wasn’t easy. She was the one who wanted to be the farmer, but her father wanted one of the boys. She had to jump through hoops to succeed her father, while had one of the boys wanted the farm, he would have just stepped into the role.

“It is still hard for women to actually farm. It is easier for them to get into ag-related fields,” she said.

I spoke to a high school junior from Illinois. She is the fifth generation on the land where she lives. The family has a large black Angus herd. She said she hopes to be an ag teacher.

“I would like to farm, but the farm will go to my younger brother. I do hope to have a small herd of Angus of my own,” she said.

There was always a crowd around the American Agri-Women booth. Maybe it was the bee pollinator seed packets they were giving away, but I was happy to see many young women engaging in conversation with AAW President Jeanette Lombardo.

Lombardo said there are still stereotypes that may be keeping some women from actually farming. Other stereotypes may exclude women from ag-related fields that involve science and math. Her organization wants to help women find the resources they need to go into agriculture in whatever capacity they choose.

“There are barriers to farming in terms of land acquisition and equipment cost. If you didn’t grow up on a family farm, then it is expensive to get started,” she said.

While women may not be in the field as much as men, they are the ones most often dealing with the stress of farming. “Wives are the glue keeping things together; men just don’t always talk about what is bothering them,” she said.

The AAW helps folks deal with stress and helps find ways to get medical attention to underserved areas.

Lombardo reminisced about her grandmother: “Grandma was in the house. She was the office manager on the farm, not in the fields. Now a daughter can be in the fields next to her father or grandfather.”

This made me think about Grandma Swaim. I definitely know she was in the field on occasion, but my main memories are of her lunches, which means she had to be in the house cooking most of the morning. In the afternoons she would drive the farm pickup around making sure everyone had a nice cold drink of water.

I have memories of my Aunt Alice driving a tractor, so I know she was out in the field in the 1970s and ‘80s. Today, both of my aunts have farmland and while some of it is cash-rented, they do various jobs on their own on the acreage.

My brothers and I own about 300 acres of land. I make absolutely no decisions about it. I am the only one who doesn’t live on the land. We cash-rent it and twice a year I get a check in the mail, and a few times a year I get money from the hunter who uses our land. Sometimes we have cut timber and I get money from that, but I’m not very connected to what is going on there.

I know Dad did not want me to go into farming. He wanted me to go to college and find a job that wasn’t so difficult or stressful. I think all parents want their children to have easier lives than they had.

I do know I will always be grateful to Grandpa Swaim for working hard and amassing enough land that his five children could all have acreage to pass down to their children. Hopefully someday, we will produce another farmer.