Results in: Woman-owned business competition, report and ag survey

Micha Ide, Bright Ide Acres, Orting, WA
Image courtesy of The Female Farmer Project

Chris McGann
Communications

Earlier this year, WSDA announced a partnership with the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) Foundation, for a new program to help farm women launch or boost their businesses.
The partnership commenced by

• Sponsoring a Women Farm to Food Business Competition
• Conducting a gap analysis of existing training resources
• Administering a survey of female farmers and entrepreneurs in Washington and Oregon to better understand their business needs and goals. 

Competition winners

Sage Dilts, owner of Barn Owl Bakery on Lopez Island, Wash. won the competition’s $20,000 grand prize. A list of the other prize winners are posted on NASDA Foundation’s Women in Agriculture webpage.

Gap analysis results

Of 49 training programs reviewed for the gap analysis, the report revealed that there are many programs designed to help women farmers launch businesses but far fewer available for the next step.

After starting up, business owners had only a handful of resources to turn to for training that would help expand their offerings to reach statewide and regional markets. Just six business development programs in Oregon and Washington served food entrepreneurs, the study found.

The Women in Agriculture program aims to provide resources to help bridge the gap in training for those in the “grow” stage of business development, the point between the initial business launch and scaling up to reach into national and international markets.

2019 Women in Agriculture Survey 

Lauren Anderson, Grain Artisan Bakery, Snohomish, WA
image courtesy of The Female Farmer Project

NASDA Foundation, WSDA and Oregon Department of Agriculture promoted the effort on social media and collected data from the online surveys from November 1, 2018 to February 28, 2019. A total of 301 women, the majority in Oregon and Washington, completed surveys. They posted the results this month.



Results

Most of the women

• Sell products at small, local markets (56 percent)
• Own or worked on a farm (74 percent).
• Have been developing their business for more than six years (60 percent)
• Produce plant-based products (52 percent)
• Have gross annual sales of less than $50,000 (82 percent)
• Large percentages of those who completed the surveys said they were interested in activities such as help with: 
• Learning from other women (75 percent)
• Communication about products (69 percent)
• Refining products and manufacturing (49 percent)
• and scaling business teams (49 percent)

Going forward

The results will inform the program’s Women's Farm to Food Accelerator which will begin development in October. The 90-day accelerator will provide training in product development, food safety, marketing and business development to help female farmers bring their products to new state and regional markets. The accelerator will include online modules, peer-to-peer learning, a women’s mentor network, and one-on-one consultations with experts.

For more information about the program contact the (NASDA) Foundation.

A "world of work" in agriculture

Chris McGann
Communications

Eighth grader, Addie Barker calibrates a class F metric weight
set used by WSDA Weights and Measures inspectors.

The white cotton glove on Addie Barker’s left hand gave her the look of a museum curator or gemologist. With a steady hand, the 14-year-old gripped a tiny metal weight with a large tweezer and placed it gingerly on the digital scale next to her laptop.

State Metrologist Leslie German watched attentively, guiding her through each step and adding occasional pointers.

Anything from the room’s temperature or humidity to the manner in which Addie sets the weight on the scale could influence the reading.

The eighth grader from NOVA Middle School had ventured beyond the confines of her Olympia classroom to WSDA’s Metrology Laboratory last week as part of the school’s “World of Work” project. She was there to experience a slice of the work life she might expect if she pursues a science-based career.

State Metrologist Leslie German shows Addie Barker how to log data from a
calibration.

This job shadow is an example of the many opportunities the agriculture industry holds for young people exploring career options – some of which may not be the first to come to mind when thinking of agriculture.

Though farming and ranching are cornerstones and what most people think of first at the mention of agriculture, some might not realize how fundamental science is to the entire agriculture industry.

As such, work in agriculture offers myriad job opportunities for aspiring scientists – careers in chemistry, microbiology, genetics, process management and ecology to name just a few.

The little-known, analytical world of metrology, or the science of measurement and measurement uncertainties, is another example.

It is the heart and soul of WDSA’s Weights and Measures Program, which tests and inspects commercial devices to provide price verification and equity for commercial transactions. The program is responsible for package inspection, public education, fuel quality monitoring, and complaint investigations.

The state Metrology Laboratory provides the verified standards and analysis for Weights and Measures field inspectors.

Without an accurate reference for a gallon or a gram or a metric ton, there would be no way to assure the public and private companies that they are getting what they’re paying for at gas pumps, grocery scales or highway weight stations.

A standard used to calibrate an official scale.

Metrology, a field that is, in a very literal sense, defined by precision, the hard sciences such as mathematics, statistics and physics are paramount.

Addie says she’s just “OK” at math, but when pressed she admitted that she currently carries a 98 percent average in her algebra class.

German, a former educator, said it was encouraging to see a young woman like Addie going into science.

“She really does have interest and I’m really tickled about that,” German said.

If Addie is really inspired by metrology, employment opportunities are plentiful.

Weighing the standards is more complicated than you might think.

“Oh my gosh! there are so many, there are labs at Boeing, medical research laboratories, it’s all over the state,” German said. “You don’t realize it, there are labs everywhere. Every state has at least one lab and a lot of biotech companies have metrologists on staff.”

German is the first woman to hold the position of Washington’s State Metrologist and industry-wide she says women are under-represented.

Although Addie clearly has the mathematical aptitude to pursue a career in metrology, she said parts of the discipline are a bit intimidating.

“I don’t think I’m organized enough to be able to do it,” she said.

But in the precise environment of the laboratory, the soft-spoken teen’s precision and a keen attention to detail shined through as she carefully recorded each observation on a spread sheet and replaced the standard to the rack.

From this observer’s prospective, it seems likely her organizational skills were more than adequate to allow her to pursue metrology or almost any scientific career path if she chooses.

She’ll probably pass her algebra class, too.

Sharing wheat country with the media

Hector Castro
Communications 

Wheat farming, like much of agriculture, is a tough business. Pests and weather can damage crops, prices fluctuate, and equipment must be constantly maintained. On top of all this, at a time when more and more people want to know where their food comes from, fewer members of the public, including reporters, have ever worked a farm.

Reporters and others gather at Green View Farm for
a tour of farms and farm equipment.

So the Washington Association of Wheat Growers hosted amedia day this past summer, taking a few reporters for a tour of some Spokane area wheat fields on a warm, sunny day in late August.

A reporter gets an inside view of a combine at
Green View Farm.

The goal was to strengthen relationships with agriculture industry reporters and help those new to the field. For everyone on the tour, it was a day to learn what it takes to cultivate wheat and get it to market, WAWG president Ben Adams said.

“We want to showcase the full process,” he said before the start of the media tour.

Reporters with the Capital Press, the Spokesman Review, the Washington State Wire website and a local weekly newspaper participated. I joined Jason Ferrante, assistant director for WSDA’s Commodity Inspection Division, and Philip Garcia, manager of the Grain Inspection Program, as part of the WSDA group attending the tour.

Planting, harvest and storage
Piling into a waiting bus, the group of a dozen people first travelled to the wheat farm of WAWG Vice President Marci Green, a sixth-generation wheat farmer.

Lonnie Green explains wheat, with wife, Marci Green,
vice-president of Washington Asoociation of Wheat Growers. 

In a cavernous barn and on a wide open field, reporters got up close to the planting and harvesting equipment used to grow wheat. In the barn, Lonnie Green, Marci’s husband, explained the workings of a massive vehicle that can dig a furrow, fertilize it and deliver seed – all at the same time, employing technology unheard of when Marci’s family first began to farm.

On the tailgate of a pickup truck, Lonnie had several dry stalks of wheat. He threshed the stalks of soft white wheat and winter wheat between his hands so the grain would fall loose onto the tailgate of a pickup, showing in their size and quantity the differences between the two.

Barley harvest at Rattlers Run Farm. 

But the field at the Green View Farm wasn’t prime for harvest, so the group travelled to nearby Rattlers Run Farm, where barley harvest was underway. The reporters on the tour each had a chance to climb aboard the towering combine for a harvest-time ride.

In between, they snapped photos of the machine in action as it churned its way through acres of golden barely.

After planting and harvest, the grain has to get to market. For growers who don’t store their grain on site, their grain is hauled to a storage facility, like the McCoy Grain Terminal near Rosalia. The facility can hold 11 million bushels of grain in piles like small hills and inside towering grain bins. Trucks and rail cars both deliver grain to the terminal, where their loads are weighed and sampled for grading.

Viewing grain pile at McCoy Grain Terminal.

In Washington, wheat consistently ranks among the state’s top commodities, with 90 percent of it bound for markets in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. So grading the grain is critical and has a direct impact on the price wheat growers can get for their crops. WSDA’s own Grain Inspection Program grades and processes grain from an annual average of 25 to 30 million metric tons bound for export. The program also processes an average of 32,000 samples each year at its three domestic inspection offices.

WAWG’s media tour this past summer mirrored other similar outreach efforts farmers and ranchers in Washington and across the country have made in recent years, as they continue seeking ways to reach out and tell the story of agriculture.