Women In Agriculture Project Looking To Help NW Women Be Profitable

Earlier this year, the Washington state Department of Agriculture announced a partnership with the Oregon Department of Ag and the NASDA Foundation to help farm women launch or boost their business.  Dr. Lisa Benson with NASDA Foundation said the Northwest was a natural fit, since 32% of farms in Washington, and 31% in Oregon are owned or operated by women, the largest percentages reported in the U.S.  She added the overall goal of the Women in Agriculture Project is to help those women make more money off of their value added businesses.

“We do that through expanding their markets, take one from maybe a local, community market, to a statewide or regional market to increase sales.  We are also helping them look at reducing the costs of developing product.  So, if you can refine your processing you can also make the same product but for cheaper.”

Dr. Benson says while this cooperative effort is based off of a template from the Virginia area, they wanted to localize it and customize it for Northwest producers.  To do that, earlier this year, the partnership conducted a survey of women farmers to find out what their personal goals are and  what kind of training will help meet those goals.

“From that information, we are now developing the Women’s Farm to Food Accelerator and targeting women in Oregon and Washington.  The goal is, we had an outline of an idea of the program, and we used that survey to inform the topics we’re going to deliver as well as the processes."

Dr. Benson says hope to launch that Accelerator soon, ideally in the winter of 2020-21.

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