by Dr. Aritree Samanta and Cevacien Adee
Image of plants in the dirt.
Agriculture in the United States has long been deeply inequitable, shaped by structural bias and resulting in consequences for the many who sustain the nation’s economy via agriculture and food supply at home and abroad. According to the latest estimates, 43% of U.S. farmland is farmed or co-farmed by women, but they have continued facing gender-related barriers in decision-making roles on their farms and remain underrepresented in USDA program design and access (American Farmland Trust, 2025). The quest for gender equity in farming and agriculture has seen some positive strides in recent decades – driven largely by grassroots organizing by farming groups, empirical research on equity gaps, civil rights lawsuits, and policy advocacy by farming non-profits. For example, as recently as in 2017, the Census of Agriculture began allowing the listing of more than one producer per farm, making women’s decision-making roles more visible. Earlier policy changes included setting participation targets for farm ownership loans in 1987 and creating the “Socially Disadvantaged Farmer or Rancher” category, which included women, in the 1990 Farm Bill, with set-asides for beginning and disadvantaged producers. More recently, $2 billion was paid to 43,000 farmers discriminated against in USDA lending prior to 2021. While these measures advanced distributive and restorative justice, major gaps remain: women farmers, for example, still face an information-representation gap in USDA programs (Samanta et al. 2021). The information-representation gap in agriculture is the mismatch where USDA programs, outreach, and networks are designed for male farmers, leaving women farmers and landowners underrepresented, underserved, and excluded from access to information, resources, and decision-making.
Federal policy shifts don’t automatically translate into equitable outcomes for women farmers. Cultural recognition of women’s central role in farming and the actions of grassroots governance entities, such as the county-level conservation districts, is critical. Our study of randomly sampled 89 districts shows that while farmers are 64.15% men and 35.85% women (2022 Census), in 37 out of these 89 districts, 41.57% of district boards are all-male. Since these boards set priorities for local and federal conservation funding, equitable representation on these boards matters. Historic land ownership restrictions—largely limited to white men—still shape who can serve, with many states requiring candidates to be landowners, gather signatures from other landowners, or even be appointed through elite or exclusionary organizations. These board candidacy rules kept power and leadership in the hands of those tied to historic land ownership.
Some states are designing measures for increasing representation on boards, such as appointing non-voting additional associate board members to carry out district tasks. In California, two years of service as an associate member makes non-landowners eligible for full board candidacy, offering an alternative means of gaining influence. Still, most states set clear term lengths but allow unlimited reappointments (no term limits), with some members serving for decades and blocking opportunities for new landowners, women, and other marginalized farmers. As a result, boards remain overwhelmingly white, male, and older while district staff who carry out the conservation work are typically younger, more diverse, and more often women. Pathways to increase representation—especially of women farmers—such as allowing districts to appoint associate board members and setting term limits, need to be replicated and adopted nationwide so that boards better serve the women who farm 43% of U.S. farmland, along with other marginalized groups.
Ultimately, gender equity in farming will be shaped by the interplay of changes at both federal and local levels. Shifts at one level—whether advancing or opposing equity—cannot alone achieve gender equity in agricultural governance. This is a hopeful frame to consider, one that aligns with historical patterns of American Federalism, that even in times of uncertainty, where there is a reversal in equity-centered policies, rescinding of programs for socially disadvantaged farmers, and a general move away from equity and justice focus culturally, sub-national governments can serve as institutional counterweights in advancing equity. This is our motivation for calling attention to the conservation districts.
About the author:
Aritree Samanta, PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of the Environment at San Francisco State University. In Spring 2025, she was a visiting professor at the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP) at Sciences Po, Paris, France. Previously, she held the position of Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Public Affairs from Cleveland State University. Her research is in the areas of collaborative natural resource governance, climate change adaptation, and equity and justice issues in climate change policy and natural resource governance. Her research can be found in Administrative Theory & Praxis, Public Policy and Administration, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, Society & Natural Resources, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, among others.
About the author:
Cevacien Adee BA, is a Master’s of Science Candidate in Geographic Information Science at San Francisco State University. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an Associate of Science degree in Geographic Information Systems from Diablo Valley College. Cevacien is a 2025-26 Climate Action Fellow, for which he is researching the spatial relationships between prescribed burning, fire risk, and social inequality in California. Cevacien’s research interests include environmental justice, fire resilience, California native plant ecology, and habitat stewardship.