Abstract
Abstract
Research seeking to reveal women's interests and deeply held beliefs about environmental health and preventing degradation must use a holistic approach to discover the contexts within which women are able to enact their beliefs. Women farmland owners in Iowa most often do not make decisions about agricultural conservation practices on their lands for reasons revealed during institutional ethnography (IE) research. The historic omission of women's contributions to agricultural enterprises compromises pathways women might use to access services from the institution of agricultural conservation. The institution of agricultural conservation reifies social barriers and discriminates by omission of services to address land as community orientations more consistent with what women affirm as goals. The language women use to describe their goals does not match agricultural conservation program directives. Outreach efforts by the institution fail to reach women through images, language, and program design that are more favorable to commodity-driven agriculture, which requires minimal constraints on maximum production. Research that uses quantitative approaches must be informed by qualitative work that accounts for these largely invisible barriers that are so prevalent as to be considered normal within agriculture and perhaps upheld by women. Particularly difficult to reveal through quantitative research are those ideals that favor restoration and enhancement of land for the greater community, but for which women express a clear and consistent desire.
Given these exigencies, it would seem logical that women farmland owners in Iowa ought to be able to care for their lands by enacting conservation practices that directly affect those lands. However, this is not the case. I argue that research designed to investigate this and other aspects of women's ecopsychology must take a holistic approach that intentionally encourages women to articulate their wishes and further relies on observations of their behaviors to draw conclusions about those wishes.
Background
In many countries around the world, women lack access to landownership rights (International Land Coalition, 2010; Mauro & Pallas, 2009; Qvist, 1995) and the outcome of many studies is the important recommendation that, because of their role in food production, women be given access to land with the full rights to make land use decisions. This recommendation assumes that when women own land, they can say what happens to it, and presumes that women would choose to grow crops on their land in such a way that, at a minimum, two measures of land health—soil and water—would be sustained to ensure long-term food production and to benefit water users in the greater environment.
In Iowa, women come to own farmland through direct purchase or inheritance—women tend to outlive their husbands, and daughters as well as sons inherit farmland. However, for mostly historic reasons, women farmland owners are generally not the ones who are counted as actively farming the land. Some women share ownership with others (e.g., siblings) who may or may not be involved in agricultural production. Although some women are sole owners of their land, others manage their land through trusts or other legal forms (e.g., life estates). Women arrange for their farmland to be rented for agricultural production through relationships with family, neighbors, farm management companies, or legal caretakers. Many times these relationships between landowners and renters—usually men—are not formalized with written contracts, and it is uncommon for conservation practices to be spelled out and required in rental contracts (Duffy & Smith, 2004; Wells, 2003).
Protecting farmland to maintain its productivity for future generations requires land owners and farmers to farm in ways that replenish in the soil what is used during crop production, keep the soil in place and in good condition for crops, and manage water abundance and quality. These methods of farming are collectively called “conservation practices”—such as terraces, grassed waterways, reduced tillage, contour row cropping, sediment control basins, and many types of buffer systems. These conservation practices are widely referred to as agricultural conservation practices because they function to protect soil and water within a working landscape of agricultural production systems, but they do not necessarily promote women landowners' ideas about repairing their lands.
An examination of women's conservation practices in Iowa showed that simply owning land does not equate to their expression of environmental quality beliefs (Bregendahl et al., 2007; Wells, 2004) or, in many cases, does not reflect even the most basic engagement with conservation (Eells, 2008). Demographic information about landownership and gender available in 2005 at the inception of the study was in conflict with behaviors and practices observed by the researcher in her role as a soil and water conservation commissioner. These data also conflicted with research that called out women's affinities with nature, their desires for environmental health, sustainable agriculture practices, and conservation practices that preserve soil and water quality (Bregendahl et al., 2007). Further, the condition of the soil and water is such that these conservation practices are called for in greater measure than at present. For example, 445 water bodies in Iowa are considered impaired for their intended uses, and although urban pollution does contribute, agricultural practices contribute significantly to these impairments (Iowa Department of Natural Resources, 2008).
Although research intended to identify the values of Iowa women landowners has been sparse, one project operating in Iowa, Women Land and LegacySM (WLL), has held meetings about topics of interest to women farmland owners. Since 2004, >800 women in 22 counties participated in listening sessions where project managers from two federal agencies and a private nonprofit organization gathered data about how women value their land. WLL reported that the women landowners exhibited an unmistakably clear and strong consciousness about land health issues and about intrinsically respecting nature not for its productive value, but because it is like “an old friend” and the sustenance of all life (Bregendahl et al., 2007, p. 36). This strong consciousness would suggest that, by rights of ownership, these women control the use of land and decide how their land is treated or used.
However, although women own farmland, they do not necessarily control the land they own. Traditionally men control that land, particularly if the women grew up in farm communities (Weber, 2007). Women farmland owners mostly do not challenge the dominant paradigm of control of agriculture by men (Sachs & Alston, 2010) and may exhibit behaviors that follow patterns similar to those of other oppressed or subjugated people who do not ask superiors for clarifications or question the judgment of superiors. People—men and women—who work in agricultural conservation may uphold these inherited and discriminatory cultural traditions that limit the amount of communication with women about farming concerns or exclude women from decision-making opportunities altogether (Eells, 2008).
Decisions about conservation practices reside with one of two entities, the producer (farmer) or the landowner. When women landowners are not consulted or do not assert their interests in conservation, their interests cannot be met through lease agreements. In a survey by Eells and Wells (2009) of farmland owners in Humboldt County, Iowa, which was informed by the qualitative findings of Eells (2008), farmland owners who rented their land—and 63% rented all their land—were not very much involved in decision making having to do with conservation practices.
Women know they should prevent environmental degradation, and during the WLL listening sessions, they expressed their desires to “build up the soils, provide wildlife habitat, restore the land to prairie, produce alternative energy, employ chemical-free farming methods, reduce erosion through low- and no-till practices, reduce production acreage, convert the land to pasture, and improve water and air quality” (Bregendahl et al., 2007, p. 36). However, women farmland owners participate less than men in every kind of decision about their farmland, and they feel limited by lack of knowledge about production practices and farm programs, especially agricultural conservation programs (Eells & Wells, 2009). Because of this lack of knowledge, women do not have a clear decision path to prevent degradation. They are not likely to be the first to notice a problem on their land, which then calls into question whether they would recognize when their land is being degraded (Eells & Wells, 2009).
Institutional Ethnography Offers a New View
To discover the reasons that apparently large numbers of these women landlords allow their land to be used in such a way that soil and water conditions were in decline, I conducted a 2-year ethnographic study of the institution of agricultural conservation from the standpoint of women farmland owners.
The approach
The work of IE research includes interviews, field observation, and document analysis to discover the processes in operation—not simply those stated as intended processes—that support or impede successful delivery and ultimately participation in desired activities (Smith, 2005). As a methodology, IE uses traditional methods of inquiry but orients to processes that coordinate and order people's lives. The IE researcher does not take up the problems of the person used for an orienting standpoint, but rather takes up an examination of the processes that may play a role in the problems of the person and does not define the person of interest as a deficiency or problem that needs to be fixed. IE is a qualitative inquiry that focuses on the process of interest rather than the number of research subjects or sampling strategies. As such, IE does not require the researcher to articulate a hypothesis or to exhaustively interview every leader, worker, or person with the standpoint. Rather, the standard for IE is to orient the study to a problematic, then beginning from a carefully articulated standpoint, to follow pathways to and through a carefully articulated institution that influences people. Decisions about which pathways to follow are guided by information about those influences. Further, to counter any bias produced by terminology or language used to communicate through text or dialog, organizational and agency promotional, informational, and instructional literature as well as trade publications and public media stories provide clues into the “ruling relations” (Smith, 2005) that ultimately determine what is important as outcomes of the institution. Ruling relations are those relationships originating from people in power that shape the rules by which work is coordinated and accomplished.
I oriented my study to the problematic that far fewer women than men participate in agricultural conservation from the standpoint of women farmland owners and looked into the institution or agricultural conservation. That is, I started with and frequently returned to the standpoint of a woman farmland owner responding to promotional appeals and actual processes to ensure that her land is used in ways that conserve the qualities she values. The problematic might be expressed as “How does the institution of agricultural conservation support women's interests in conserving their farmland?”
Any number of women farmland owners—and all women farmland owners I came in contact with—could describe their experience with and interest in the process of protecting their land. Although there was little prior research into women farmland owner's conservation interests, the existing data were collected with the assumption that the processes to enact conservation were benign and equal with respect to gender. IE allowed me to see the familiar with new understanding. I conducted oral history interviews with eight women farmland owners to understand their situations and orient to their standpoint. Additionally, with IE methodology I could value the experiences and viewpoints of all women farmland owners I met who had something to say about their interests in conservation on their land. With written permissions, their stories were included in the original research.
The institution
I defined the institution as all federal, state, and county governmental agencies; private nonprofit organizations; and for-profit agricultural organizations that provide information, outreach, marketing, or educational opportunities about agricultural conservation in Iowa. These organizations communicate the institutional processes landowners must follow to protect and conserve their land and provide assistance and supporting materials (e.g., pamphlets, websites, and media) that target producers and landowners. Conservation assistance takes the form of technical advice from conservation workers about best practices for correcting or preventing environmental degradation and some public funding toward the share of the cost of installing conservation practices on private lands. This IE project also examined internal directives of the provider agencies and organizations that govern how workers process assistance to landowners. Interviews with agency and organizational leaders provided a view into the overarching processes and rules, such as federal laws and funding, which impact the delivery of agricultural conservation messages and services. I have worked with these leaders in nonformal outreach and through civic service for more than 2 decades and have access to high-level leaders and field workers alike.
In addition to conducting interviews with women farmland owners, I conducted interviews that provided factual orientation to the processes of conservation service delivery. Although I created written records, I did not generally capture direct quotations. However, I accomplished member checks and reviewed processes of interest with interviewees to gain agreement on accuracy, so I could discern direct and indirect influences on the institutional processes at each step.
Influences on the processes were sorted to identify those that led to differential effects on women farmland owners. For example, one conservation worker described his practice of having producers in mind who would be ready to enroll on short notice when a conservation program enrollment period opened up—enrollment periods can be short and occasionally occur without much advance notice. Most programs have limited amount of funds available, and for most programs, demand for public funding assistance exceeds available funds. This worker's practice increases the likelihood that traditional clients—men—will continue to be served first and reduces the likelihood that new clients—particularly those who are unfamiliar with or less knowledgeable about conservation—will enter into the program enrollment. His ability to allocate all of the funds available to his service area is held in esteem within his agency, and other conservation workers stated this man is seen as a good manager who is capable of moving the public funds quickly to get conservation practices on the land to any eligible participants.
In addition to interviews, I observed conservation workers in their offices and during service visits to farmland owners and their land. These observations contextualized the realities of agricultural conservation service delivery. I also examined documents (e.g., government forms for communicating procedures to landowners) that serve as legal case files that move through agency procedures as surrogates for the landowner's wishes. I got written permissions from an agency and a woman farmland owner, Alma, to meet with an agency conservation worker and obtain the government forms that might comprise her case files. Alma and I met with Reid, who set up a mock application for a conservation practice. I asked Reid to simulate and describe every step from how he checked to assure she was eligible to apply—the first step—to what information was captured (or omitted) from the forms that became the surrogate for her goals. These forms would travel to other agencies then back again for storage in a massive file system. Alma grew sleepy as Reid and I went through the detailed information he would gather from a landowner, and she smiled and shook her head, “I really don't understand any of this.”
I used this method of obtaining official forms with each agency and organization that had the potential to serve the conservation needs of farmland owners. As I examined the forms, I noted the types of information that were carried forward and discovered that many of the conservation ideas women had expressed were not included in what was reported. In other words, there was little about the processes that communicated that women's concerns mattered because only information that was of interest in the traditional client/agency relationship—mainly economics and technical information—was captured. If women did not know much about what they would be receiving in the end, there was nothing about the process that would inform them.
Data analysis of women's interviews involved not only considering the words women used to describe their land, but also the pauses where they searched for words to describe what they were thinking and feeling (DeVault, 1999; Harding, 1989). Longino and Doell (1996) in their analysis of a range of studies on sex differences, “demonstrate the permeability of inquiry to culturally based assumptions … the different ways in which the structure of inquiry permits the expression of ideology in the content of research. It's not a matter of the willful imposition of stereotypes” (p. 5). As I considered what women said and struggled to say, I had to be mindful that their standpoint as nonparticipants in conservation programs could not be discovered if I imposed an ideological framework of the institution on my analysis.
Listening to women also involved constant vigilance to listen for their interests in healthy lands and stay mindful of the strong presence of hegemony at work (Brookfield, 2005; Sachs and Alston, 2010), which means that some women work to uphold the system of hierarchy in agriculture, which keeps men in decision-making roles and women in subservient and subjugated roles, particularly when it comes to conservation.
Conclusion
This IE project brought contextual factors into view as barriers to women's participation in agricultural conservation. What I discovered first was that the problem was not how women were overtly treated once they made it to the institution, but that social barriers significantly impeded women's progress toward the institution where conservation assistance could be found. Aspects of paperwork, how personnel are trained and the organizational culture they work in, and the design of conservation programs were institutional barriers that were revealed once the effects of those social barriers were exposed.
Social barriers became apparent when I conducted eight oral history interviews with women farmland owners and realized most of them lacked the language of conservation to describe their land. These three statements, “He showed me that it had gotten so rough”; “I know there's a wet place he's … (trailed away without detail)”; and “along the timber there's grass” are vague terms that correspond to conservation terminology for an ephemeral gully, a wetland, and a buffer, respectively.
Further, many women made it clear that their renters make all conservation decisions. “I just let my renter take care of anything that needs to be done.” Although some women wished their renters would do more conservation, many were content to let others make the decisions and bring them to their attention if action is needed. Further, many could not describe conservation practices used on their land, but they were also eager to assure me that their own renter was a very good farmer. These findings coincide with the findings of the analysis of materials, outreach, language, and images in documents used to promote conservation that are masculine and further reify that women do not do conservation—a mirror of the social norms that define hierarchical gendered roles in farm decision making.
Women who lacked the technical language of conservation also lacked standards by which to judge the level of protection their land received, and they were bound to whatever they were told about conservation by men who may or may not share their dreams and values. When women cannot articulate their goals for land protection in ways that generate action by men who are caring for their land, or make their goals clear to conservation workers, they may feel embarrassed by what they do not know. They are not likely to put themselves into embarrassing situations or where they do not see other women like themselves as successful participants in agricultural conservation. Thus, existing systems for conservation assistance are largely unavailable to women.
My examination of government conservation programs revealed a poor fit with women's interests or their documented, holistic, and ecological views of their land (Bregendahl et al., 2007). Conservation programs have developed in response to a male-dominated agriculture system and commodity, profit-driven values that require minimal restraints on maximum production, which is in sharp contrast to language of restraint that women articulated in the listening sessions (Bregendahl et al., 2007). Programs offered by nonprofit organizations did not provide suitable alternatives for women because most often these programs redirected landowners to the government programs, which require commitments to conservation practices installed through contracts that may bind landowners to restrictions with fines for noncompliance. This also contrasts to women's reluctance to getting involved with contracts where they lose their independence when the contract period is in force (Bregendahl et al., 2007).
Field observations of and interviews with conservation workers and analysis of reporting forms used by those workers made plain that the workers are trained to serve men and commodity-driven interests and not women or community interests. Conservation workers are conditioned to hear requests for services that fit or can be made to fit the programs they are charged with delivering. Thus I heard a woman's request for wetlands for water treatment go unanswered and unreported because her request came in a form that the worker could not address with a program as it was designed. This is important because it demonstrates that conservation workers are not rewarded for documenting requests for service they cannot fulfill and they are limited in how they may spend their time serving the agency and landowners.
It was during this part of the research when it was most plain to see that when it came to the agricultural conservation programs, women and their interests are invisible. Outreach that is not targeted to women, excludes women. This was visible in publications rife with technical language of conservation and agriculture—which women did not use—and images of agriculture and conservation practices that not only depict male subjects but also tools and equipment that are associated most strongly with men. Some women I interviewed spoke of wanting to try small-scale solutions to fix problems they could clearly identify, but they could not recognize women like themselves doing the conservation practices they envisioned in any of the forms and outreach materials I analyzed. In other words, literature and promotional information sent to a general audience relies on traditional conservation messaging that includes language that centers on profitability and is designed to appeal to men, is framed in technical conservation language that men created, and shows images of conservation practices as they have been designed and implemented by men in the decision-making roles in agriculture. This perpetuates a system of agricultural conservation wherein women remain outside their role as rightful decision makers for their land whether by hegemony or omission. In fact, one woman remembered having received literature from the conservation office, but “didn't think it was meant for me.”
Overall, the agricultural conservation practices, both by design and through implementation, reflect and serve an orientation to farmland as a commodity to be used for maximum production even if some of its greater values are compromised in doing so. In contrast, women spoke of their land as part of their community—loosely defined as their neighborhood and family—but including all the values of social bonds and future generations, and they saw their farmland as the center of this community (Bregendahl et al., 2007). I conceive of these differing views of land as land-as-community and land-as-commodity orientations, but argue that these are not necessarily binary choices. Instead I view these as along a gradient where choices for land protection and use may reflect combined orientations.
That said, the agricultural conservation practices offered to all—including women—largely reflect the land-as-commodity orientation desired by the ruling relations of profit maximization with the least possible restraints. If women's interests in land-as-community conservation practices are invisible, so too are the interests of men who hold land-as-community orientations. Thus the discrimination in agricultural conservation programs is not solely gender discrimination but discrimination against a view of land use involving restraint and community members who do not profit by an extractive agriculture.
Recommendations
Research into women's affinity for nature that seeks to use observations of women farmland owners requires a holistic approach—even in geographic areas where women do own land and could participate as research subjects. Not only are women's contributions to agricultural enterprises difficult to see (Fink, 1987, 1992), but if their apparent interest, or lack of interest, in conservation land protection is measured using traditional conservation frameworks and language (e.g., in a survey), their interests will not be served and perhaps even harmed. Women's expressions of their desires for healthy land and water for future generations may be largely invisible when measured by agency and organizational conservation programs. Further, observations of their land may be insufficient to judge their desires for healthy land management or many factors that influence what—and how much—land protection is implemented.
Government data and organizational literature that report agricultural conservation practices implemented by numbers of acres or linear measures of stream protection or practices installed must be considered in light of land-as-commodity orientations, because almost no agency programs adequately meet land-as-community values, and such programs that do exist receive limited funding and technical support provided by conservation workers and are marginalized in favor of land-as-commodity conservation practices. At this time, quantitative measures of land-as-community conservation practices are difficult to identify and are inadequate to stand as an accurate reflection of land-as-community values held by a population which, in the case of Iowa where half the landowners are women, is not a minority of the population.
Any quantitative study must have a qualitative component to capture the personal reality of women. Research into women's ecopsychology may miss too much if survey methodology is used, as it often is in the United States where women landowners are just as likely to be included in a survey sample as men are. Issues of vocabulary, knowledge, and hegemony are likely to confound accurate quantitative measures of women's interests.
There are many historic and social reasons why women are not listened to by tenants and farming family members—and I found reasons why women may not be listened to by the very agencies charged with providing equal services to all. Government agriculture databases have more recently started including women's contributions to the agricultural enterprise, but for reasons I have outlined here they fail to capture and therefore accurately represent women's interests and desires for agricultural conservation protection for their farmland. Research into women's farmland and conservation interests must begin with women's realities and context.
Footnotes
Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist