Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

A newsletter for faculty, staff and students

March-April 2005 • Vol. 31, No. 2

300 women in agriculture meet in Hot Springs

By Fred Miller, AGCS

When Mary Ann Baxter’s father, a country doctor, gave her a farm in Monroe County in 1984, she didn’t know what to do with it.

“He told me, ‘farm it,’” Baxter, of North Little Rock, said during a break between sessions at the first Arkansas Women in Agriculture Conference March 3-4 in Hot Springs.

Carroll County extension agent Linda Chappell talks with Dr. Susan Takigiku, assistant professor of human environmental sciences, following her Arkansas Women in Agriculture Conference session about methamphetamine problems in rural areas.

Using the farm land as collateral, Baxter took out a loan, planted her first crop and came out $10,000 ahead, until repairs and service for farm machinery cost her about $9,000. The next thing she learned was to never put the farm up for collateral.

“You’re supposed to put the crop up for the loan,” she said. “So when I went back to the bank the next year, I had them make that change.”

Baxter continued to learn, and today she operates a 4,300-acre farm growing rice, soybeans, wheat, corn and minnows. “I learned you have to diversify,” she said. She thinks it’s about time for a conference devoted to women in agriculture.

“Look how dumb I was in the beginning,” she said. “This conference offers information women need to know. And I think we all need to know about other aspects of farming. I don’t know anything about poultry.”

More than 300 participants, including a handful of men, attended the conference hosted by the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

“It was extremely successful not just in the numbers, but also in the phenomenal level of interest,” said Jennie Popp, associate professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness in Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.

“On the way out, one woman hugged me and was crying so hard I could barely understand her as she thanked us for putting on the conference,” Popp said. “I think this is a wonderful beginning, and it shows there’s a demand for an agricultural conference for women,”

Popp and colleague Janie Hipp, assistant professor and natural resources regulatory policy specialist, received a grant of $20,000 to help pay for the conference. The grant is from the Women’s Giving Circle, made up of about 80 women involved in the University of Arkansas Campaign for the Twenty-First Century.

“I think we just opened the floodgates,” Hipp said. “We’re already getting e-mails from women who have all kinds of ideas for what to do next year.”

“In Arkansas, an estimated 19,900 women are farm operators, and nearly 5,000 are principal operators,” Popp said.

“This is a large group of people who are not being adequately served,” Hipp said. “Anything we do to help women do a better job will pay off in a stronger agricultural sector and better communities.”

The conference sessions covered a range of topics from estate planning, agricultural cooperatives, agricultural loans and marketing to genealogy, parenting, horticulture and dietary guidelines.

Carolyn James, who operates a farm in Woodruff County, said she enjoyed the sessions and would like to see some of the topics covered in greater depth. “I’d like to learn more about marketing,” she said. “I’d also like to see someone who could tell us what’s going on with the farm bill.”

Information from the sessions will be made available on the conference Web site: http://www.arwomeninag.com.

“It’s not even a question of whether we’re going to have another one,” Hipp said. “You don’t have to convince the 300 women who were there that there’s a need for this. They have plenty of ideas for what we should have next year.”