Breaking barriers: Women-led organizations empower Iowa's female farmland owners

In Northeast Iowa’s Clayton County, there’s a 320-acre plot of land that belongs to Theresa Eberhardt. Some of it is dotted with timber or enrolled in a conservation program; most of it is coated with crops. Corn, soybeans and cover crops rotate spots on the fields, planted using no-till methods.

Eberhardt, 55, used to co-own the land with her husband, who was more focused on managing the property. When he passed away about seven years ago, Eberhardt became overwhelmed with her new responsibilities as sole landowner.

“I just didn't know what I was doing or what needed to be done,” she said.

She recounted one of her first solo trips to her local U.S. Department of Agriculture service center, where a worker tried to explain a concept to her. “I remember standing there and asking her to please stop and slow down. I said, ‘You're going to have to explain things to me like I'm dumb. Because I am.’”

Eberhardt is one of the many women who own farmland in Iowa. Women landowners, including those who co-own land, make up 47 percent Iowa farmland owners, a 2022 study found, accounting for 46 percent of the state’s farmland acres. But women have long been overlooked in programming and education materials for landowners, leaving them ill-equipped to conquer the role compared with their male counterparts.

That dynamic is slowly changing, thanks to organizations led by women for women. Amid a male-dominated field, the groups are catering their resources to female landowners and creating safe educational havens for them to learn about conservation practices, forestry, agricultural management and more. The opportunities give participants the needed skills to take agency over their land.

Women farmland owners in Iowa now have more resources than ever before to succeed — but there’s still room to improve, advocates say.

“We're half the landowners. That's a $130 billion asset in Iowa,” said Jean Eells, founder and owner of E Resources Group, who multiplied half the state’s corn and soybean acres with the state’s average value per acre to arrive at the figure. “Somebody's got to talk to us. … Women need to be at the table to have these conversations.”

Missing perspectives

If asked to envision a female farmer, you could probably conjure a picture in your head. But what if the same question were asked about a female landowner? With the lack of public awareness surrounding them, it might be a bit more difficult.

Wendong Zhang is answering that question through data. He is an assistant professor at Cornell University in New York. who, until recently, was the lead researcher of Iowa State University’s Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure Survey. The survey stretches back to the 1940s and is now conducted every five years.

The latest findings of his team, released this month, show that women owned just as much Iowa farmland in 2022 as they did in 1982. They tend to own smaller parcels of land than men and are more likely to enroll that land in conservation programs — a trend that has increased since 2017.

Zhang’s team also found that women landowners tend to be older than their male counterparts. Many of those women, particularly those aged 65 and above, are widows.

“When looking at senior landowners, women also are becoming an even bigger, important and understudied group,” he said.

University extension programs and USDA programs typically are geared toward farmers and ranchers in general, not specifically landowners, Zhang said. Even programming geared toward landowners is often more focused on those who farm or ranch the land themselves — overlooking the many women who own their land but don’t operate on it.

Even getting data about women landowners is tough. For example, in a recent study by Zhang and other researchers on farm succession in Iowa, over 90 percent of the original survey respondents were male. He had to ask in large letters on the questionnaire that female co-owners answer when possible so he could gather their views, too.

“For a lot of the information we gather, we lose perspectives on women landowners or producers,” he said. “It's really hard to find even the voices of women producers, let alone women landowners.”

When reached, women landowners share barriers many of them encounter — both structurally and emotionally.

If a husband passes away, for instance, his widow may be thrust into a management role she has never experienced before. She may not know how to negotiate with tenants who operate the farm; she may not feel confident doing so. Much of the programming available to her would be predominantly attended by men, where she may not feel comfortable asking questions. Or, she may not even be invited to or aware of the educational opportunities.

“You hear lots of anecdotal evidence of this,” Zhang said. “Even though they're legal landowners, many of the women sometimes feel less empowered and less knowledgeable.”

Impacts to conservation

When Eells was pursuing her Ph.D in agricultural education in 2002, she was gobsmacked to learn that women owned nearly half of Iowa’s farm acres. She became the first person nationally to conduct scholarly work on women and conservation in agriculture.

Even though landowners may not farm their own land, they are all responsible for the activities that take place on their property and their impacts — to soil health, water quality and beyond — Eells said.

A June 2022 study found that about half of Iowa’s women farmland owners rent out at least some of their acres. But they are often left out of the conservation conversation.

Eells witnessed evidence of that firsthand. While a commissioner in about 2003 with the Hamilton County Soil and Water Conservation District, she had to approve applications for funding assistance for conservation practices. Of the 50 folders of applications, only three had women’s names.

“How do you square that, with half the land being owned by women?” she asked. “Where were women, and why were we — in conservation and agriculture — missing them so badly?”

Conservation in agriculture was simply designed by men for men, Eells said. Male landowners were the primary audience because they’re traditionally seen as the decision-makers. Women who aren’t entrenched in the world of conservation may not understand or be interested in land ownership and conservation. Many need guidance to learn the ropes. Even though most agencies accept women with open arms, women may not feel confident enough to engage in such programs.

“The nature of what they say can make your eyes just spin because it all sounds like a foreign language. You can feel stupid,” Eells said. “By and large, a lot of women find themselves in that boat, so they don't necessarily even come in to get help.”

In another of Zhang’s studies about women landowners, he explored what information the group wants to know about conservation and how they best receive it.

His team found that women landowners are interested agricultural carbon credit programs, soil erosion control, soil fertilizer management and cover crops. They prefer a mix of in-person and virtual interactions to gather information.

Most programs don’t have a component explicitly meant to reach women in the way they prefer, Eells said. To better access those landowners, it will take intentional design.

“Anybody who's doing conservation in Iowa who isn't reaching women landowners isn't very serious about conservation,” she said.

Women-led efforts

The Women, Food and Agriculture Network creates connections across Iowa that educates, supports and connects women in agriculture, including women landowners.

It’s one of several organizations in the state that’s led by women and designed for women by catering to their learning preferences. Collectively, such events have attracted thousands of participants.

A typical daylong WFAN meeting starts with about 20 women converging in a room, eager to learn.

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They each introduce themselves and the land they own. Then, meeting leaders home in on a topic — like soil health, or a USDA program, or watersheds — and sit in a circle to discuss it and ask questions in the comfort of their own gender. After lunch, the group takes a trip to learn about the topic in the field.

When the meeting is complete, most attendees leave ready to get results on their properties. Follow-up surveys showed that between 50 and 70 percent of participants of a one-day meeting took action to improve conservation on their land.

“The network programming is designed to be where women can thrive as learners,” said Eells, who works as a subcontractor for the network. “Creating a setting where they can make up for lost time and rapidly acquire the knowledge skills and support that they need requires a different kind of learning setting.”

Another organization with similar efforts is Women, Land and Legacy — a project created in 2003 for Iowa women involved in agriculture, particularly those new to the industry.

Its programming has since spread from five pilot counties to 41 counties. Each location forms a locally-funded team that can be comprised of USDA staffers, ISU extension staffers, soil and water conservation districts and female farmers. From there, the core team disperses invitations for educational events and listening sessions to women.

Tanya Meyer-Dideriksen is a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service state outreach coordinator who works with Women, Land and Legacy. She has heard attendees ask about conservation practices, estate planning, tenant relationships, USDA programs and soil health — all in the comfort of other women. About 10,000 have participated in the program in Iowa since it started in 2003

“There's a lot more comfort in being in a room that's predominantly women to ask your questions, talk with other women around your table and gain information,” Meyer-Dideriksen said.

Other women-led efforts are focused on specific aspects of land ownership — like forest stewardship. In 2018, women owned about 20 percent of Iowa’s family forests. Family forests, which are forested or wooded property privately owned by individuals or families, represented 77 percent of Iowa’s forests in total.

Julia Baker, an ISU natural resources extension program specialist, formed the Women’s Woodland Stewardship Network to focus on women interested in learning more about timber. Attendees don’t have to be landowners; they just have to be interested in forestry.

Practiced female foresters share their knowledge with participants, including lessons on oak regeneration, invasive species and tree removal. Some events whisk attendees — all with a variety of timber experience — to woodlands that have been well-managed to show what healthy forests should look like.

“Increasing decision-making involvement is one of the core principles of this (network),” Baker said. “There might be more women listed as primary decision-makers or simply more involved if they just had the opportunity to gain a little bit more knowledge and confidence.”

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More work to do

Ruth Rabinowitz was a wedding photographer for two decades. When her father’s health started to fail around 2012, though, she switched gears: She decided to start managing his farmland in Mitchell, Madison, Clarke and Union counties.

She dove into educating herself about agriculture. She attended conferences; she visited her local USDA service center; she reached out to organizations for help. She successfully transformed her dad’s farmlands — traditionally corn and soybeans — into more sustainable agriculture and conservation land.

Now, she owns 550 acres of land — and is a WFAN stewardship ambassador. In that role, she has given presentations to other women about her agricultural journey as a female landowner.

“If I can help somebody get there faster and not have to learn for 10 years what I just had to learn, that’s great,” Rabinowitz said. “We have to help each other as a community of people in this line of work.”

The community of female landowners is alive and thriving in Iowa — the result of decades of women-led efforts. But the state still has a long ways to go, Eells said.

“It's still kind of novel (to some),” she said about outreach to women landowners. “But we do have a movement, I would say.”

Brittney J. Miller is the Energy & Environment Reporter for The Gazette and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; brittney.miller@thegazette.com