Farms managed by women are more profitable, conference hears

Research has found that farms managed by women are more profitable but farm women continue to describe themselves as "merely helping out", the Department of Agriculture's chief economist, Ann Derwin, said yesterday.

“There is a lot of research to show that farms co-managed by women actually make more money. They are more profitable,” Ms Derwin said.

A study of 1.8 million farms in the US found that farms co-managed by women were 23 per cent more profitable. “That’s a staggering difference... and it’s telling us that women can really contribute in making farms a commercial success.”

Unnoticed
She said farm women had no public face and their contribution went unnoticed, even though they were often the main breadwinners.

Ms Derwin was speaking at the annual Women and Agriculture conference in Killarney, organised by the Irish Farmers' Journal and FBD.

She noted that only 13 per cent of Irish farms were in the sole ownership of a woman and only 8 per cent of €1.2 billion in single farm payments went to women farmers last year. Yet in the Galicia region of Spain, which has similar farming practices to Ireland, 58 per cent of farmers are women and women receive 44 per cent of total single farm payments.

Fine Gael MEP Maireád McGuinness said changing demographics meant more women would inherit land and would farm. "And they should be encouraged to do so. Yet women are virtually invisible in farming politics and in coverage of agriculture. It is time that women stood into the photographs," she said. "Without visibility there will be no change."

'Easy option'
Sian Bushnell, a succession planning facilitator from Wales, said daughters tended to be overlooked in the UK when it came to finding someone to take over the farm. "But I think it's worse in Ireland. It's almost like the easy option to ignore the girls but it's so unfair. We need women role models so that young girls can aspire to be farmers."

She said families did not talk about who would take over the farm as they were afraid of causing upset. Mothers should welcome their daughters-in-law into the family, she added. “They’re scared she’s going to run off with half the farm and so they hold her at arm’s length and of course it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”