AN ORGANISATION is helping enhance women's roles in farming, writes GENEVIEVE BARLOW

Prue Addlem may not yet epitomise the 21st century farmer, but she will certainly give the industry in her area a fresh image when she returns full-time next month to help run her family's farm.

Prue, 25, who holds degrees in agriculture and business, says there are no other women her age farming around Serpentine, north of Bendigo, where her family grows crops and runs livestock.

Three years ago she joined Australian Women in Agriculture, a national organisation that's about to mark its 17th birthday, for a little female farming mentoring.

"My view is that men (in farming) talk money," Prue says.

"Women don't tend to focus on money.

"I got speaking to a lot of women there (at AWiA). They were a great network and had women from every different farming sector."

Formed in 1993, AWiA has had a fairly low profile, but recently, thanks to agitation by its members, it landed some plum funding from the Federal Government, via Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister Tony Burke.

In May last year it was granted $50,000 from the Government's Recognising Women Farmers program, to train women in agriculture, fisheries and forestry, building their skills in decision making, strategic thinking, planning and communication.

Under the Federal Government's Next Gen Farmers program, which aims to encourage young people into agriculture, the AWiA also received $45,000 to train 16 young women in networking and leadership.

The organisation, led by retired sheep breeder, former secondary school principal and rural sociologist, Dr Pat Hamilton, is clearly encouraging women to step up into bigger, more public roles in agriculture.

Frustrated by a continuing blindness to the talents of farming women, which still sees them poorly represented on agricultural company boards and industry committees, AWiA -whose formal mission is to raise the profile of rural women to help make farming sustainable - is working to change this.

Pat says her PhD research, completed in 2007, showed women are equally talented but face the double whammy of lacking confidence and agriculture's tendency to stick with well-networked men.

Non family-friendly meeting hours and field days, plus poorly communicated educational opportunities, exacerbate this, she says, although some sectors are changing.

For example, Genetics Australia's board is bereft of women, as is the board of Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co Limited. Dairy Australia lists one woman, an interim secretary, in an otherwise all-male board for 2008-09.

And that's just the dairy industry.

"A lot of people in the industry say 'yeah, we don't discriminate against women' but they don't change, either," Pat says.

"They keep recycling men through their boards. It's not just women, it's young people between 35 and 45 who miss out, too."

AWiA was set up after a 1992 meeting in Ballarat, called by bureaucrats from the then Victorian Office of Rural Affairs, including Anna Lotkowiz and Liz Hogan, which tapped into a rising frustration among women on farms.

A formal meeting in 1993 in Euroa created the bones of AWiA.

It flourished in its early years, but hit a hiatus in the early to mid 1990s, before Tallangatta farmer Elaine Paton took the reins and, with a coterie of well-educated, hands-on female colleagues, set about reinvigorating it.

It's not so much a male-female thing, says former AWiA president, Cathy McGowan, but what both genders bring to the table.

"Women think about agriculture differently. Blokes think productivity, tonnes per acre and profit. Women see food, families, landscape, kids, nutrition," says Cathy.

"If you have the men and women together you get a good mix of those things.

"If you only have the bloke thinking, you have productivity."

Alison McIntosh, 26, a specialist cattle industry consultant on the National Livestock Identification System , AWiA member and participant in its Next Gen Farmer workshop training, says she doesn't want to see gender segregation in agriculture.

"As much as I think we should all be in agriculture together and not as males and females, there are some aspects where it helps to have the support of a women's farming network," Alison says.

She says AWiA's Next Gen weekend workshop taught her about dealing with people, and about different attitudes, and equipped her with communication and networking skills.

"We really developed a network and support for each other," she says.

AWiA has more than 250 members, according to Pat Hamilton.

That's not many, given that it's estimated there are 70,000 women in farm businesses around Australia.

Recently Prue Addlem, who also chairs the Victorian Farmers Federation's Young Agribusiness Program, posted a request on AWiA's online forum, with the aim of identifying programs encouraging young people into agriculture.

Over the next few days she had 20 emailed responses.

"The women seem willing to share ideas and tend to be keen to pass on other's details," Prue says.

Perhaps like the old boys, the old and young girls in farming are truly learning how to network and AWiA is teaching them how.

  • Genevieve Barlow is an AWiA member