Sondra Pierce, who grows sugar beets, hay and sunflowers on a Colorado farm, “doesn’t look like the average American principal (farm) operator,” says Harvest Public Media, but she is emblematic of a change in agriculture and its data-keeping. Married couples run one-third of the farms in the United States, but because of the way census questions are asked, men show up more often in the records. In the latest Census of Agriculture, 30 percent of farmers were women. The portion of farms operated primarily by a woman is nearly 14 percent.
The Census of Agriculture didn’t ask about multiple operators on a farm or their sex until 2002. A recent USDA report says many farmers are joint operators run by married couples. The operations tend to list the man first; three-fifths of female farmers are listed as the second operator, says Harvest Public Media. It quotes rural sociologist Julie Zimmerman of the University of Kentucky as saying, ““Women have always worked in agriculture, historically. I think a key issue is whether or not it’s counted.”