Beginning and female farmers are crucial for the succession of the next generation of farming. Despite policy interventions to provide access to credit, land, and capital, little is known about whether the end-market consumers support the business ventures of beginning farmers and their products. Using an incentivized online experiment, this study assesses consumers' willingness to support beginning and female farmers in direct monetary donations, real effort volunteerism support, and willingness-to-pay for products. The results show that consumers, in general, do not differentiate their support for beginning farmers relative to generic farmers except in the case of voluntary effort exertion.
Although the number of U.S. farms is dropping, the number of female farmers is rising. In 1978, about 128,000, or 5.2 percent of all U.S. farmers, were women. They tend to run smaller farms and earn less than their male counterparts. They are also older and more likely to be full owners of the land they farm.
For researchers studying demographic trends in farming, the number of women participating in agriculture in the United States has posed a series of contradictions.
USDA NASS 2017 Farm Census Report - Farms with Female Producers, pp 13-14
note: no breakout on who is principle operator/producer
USDA NASS 2017 Farm Census Report - Farm Producers Highlight
Information on the amount and types of agricultural credit to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers (SDFR)—which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines as members of certain racial and ethnic minority groups and women—is limited. Comprehensive data on SDFRs’ outstanding agricultural debt are not available because regulations generally prohibit lenders from collecting data on the personal characteristics of applicants for loans other than certain mortgages.
Aspen Institue: Root Capital’s Issue Brief
“We share our experience of applying a gender lens to our work in smallholder agricultural finance. Through our Women in Agriculture Initiative, we have been able to better understand the areas in which we know we support women (as farmers, agro-processing employees, and leaders). This work has also identified new areas for potential impact that further foster economic empowerment for women, underscoring the vital nature of women in less conspicuous — but high-impact — roles and positions. We call these protagonists “hidden influencers,” and in agriculture they include midlevel managers at agricultural businesses, agronomists, leaders of farmer networks, and agrodealers.”
From 2018 - Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
“Studies on gender-related differences in credit markets have been sparse, and little consensus appears to have emerged from these analyses.”
As amended in 1976, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) outlawed discrimination in granting credit on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex or marital status, and age. This article examines the difficulties of transforming the goals of the act into effective regulation, looks at what economic theory implies about the possibility of discriminatory behavior in credit markets, and reviews existing statistical evidence concerning discrimination in consumer credit markets.
This paper uses a global data set of 350 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 70 countries to study the common belief that women are generally better credit risks in microfinance than men. The results confirm that a higher percentage of female clients in MFIs is associated with lower portfolio risk, fewer write-offs, and fewer provisions, all else being equal. Interaction effects reveal that, while focus on women is generally associated with enhanced repayment, this trend is stronger for nongovernmental organizations, individual-based lenders, and regulated MFIs.
Study from Michigan Technological University by Dr Angie Carter
Study from University of Idaho by Dr Ryanne Pilgeram
In 2012, the number of women farmers in the United States was 969,672. This was a 2 percent decrease in women farmers since 2007, when the last agriculture census was conducted. Of total female farmers, 288,264 were principal operators, that is, the person in charge of the farm’s day-to-day operations. Farms with women principal operators decreased 6 percent between 2007 and 2012