Farmer Jane: Women Changing The Way We Eat

What a terrific resource this book has turned out to be! I started reading it, thinking it would just give a small biography of some women who have been active in the foodie industry, but what I found was an engaging collection of well organized summaries of the contributions of selected energetic people to the present day sustainable farming movement. I forgot this was a book about women as I became thoroughly involved in the details of each person’s story. Then I stopped and said, ‘…and these were all women!”

I was not familiar with the names of most of the women whose short biographies were presented in this collection. I do hope to find their names in future reading that I do. As editor of a CSA newsletter, I found this book show more valuable enough to keep as part of my permanent collection not only for its content, bibliography, and references (websites, organizations, etc.) but also for the many ideas it presented. In particular, I liked that many chapters ended with suggestions for what a reader of this book could do to make a positive impact on the road to sustainable agriculture. I’m going to love to take those ideas, expound on them and pass them along to others.

The only thing I thought was missing from this book was pictures of the individuals whose remarkable stories were presented. I certainly hope that pictures of them will one day be included in any future edition of this book. show less

This book is an interesting and inspiring exploration of food production trends from a feminist perspective.

Covering six areas (farm-to-eater connections, advocating for social change, local/seasonal food, networking for food production, the urban female farmer and the next generation of farmers), each section has individual profile of female farmers highlighting the issues according to the category. Food production/delivery trends such as Slow Food, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), biodynamics, Food Not Bombs and the locavore movement are introduced and explained. The author is to be commended for drawing her profiles from a very diverse group of women and from all areas of the US (the profiles are somewhat skewed to California - show more not surprising as the author is based out of the San Francisco area).

I enjoyed the book immensely. The women profiled showed a great deal of passion for bringing good, healthy food (for people AND the planet) to market. I learned something from each woman profiled and it made me realize what an intensely political issue food production/delivery is. But the greatest strength of this book is not in what others are doing but in how each of us can be part of the solution against big, impersonal agribusinesses. At the end of each section is a "recipes for action" segment which contains recommendations specifically targeted to whether you are an eater, a farmer or a food business. These recommendation range from the simple (buy local) to the highly involved (sponsoring an internship program) and gives everyone the felling that they can make a difference. Add to this a very extensive appendix and resources section (including contact information on the women profiled if you wished to get further information) and the book becomes a catalyst to allow you to be your own agent for change.

Highly recommended for anyone who eats. show less

Farmer Jane is set up as a bunch of short vignettes on various women who are currently active as farmers, activists, or otherwise involved in food production. I found it very interesting to get a female perspective on this because so many of today's big books by Michael Pollan, etc, are very much focused on men. Books like Farmer Jane always make me feel a little more hopeful for our future.

Engaging look at the women working at all levels to improve quality, access, and justice in agriculture & farming today. The focus is sustainable food and farming across the U.S., however it does tend to be somewhat "California-centric", but does make the effort to represent most of the country in some form or another. The author profiles a wide variety of women, some more extreme politically and agriculturally but many are moderate and make the topics accessible and relevant to those just entering into the realm of the modern farming. The action pointers at the end of each section are excellent, and within reach for most of us, even the least political. This book will get you fired up to take action and get empowered about your food.

This interesting little book is a collection of biographies of female food activists (organic, buy local etc), farmers, restaurateurs, co-op runners and almost every conceivable combination of them. Overall I think it would be a great resource for anybody wanting to become involved in the business side of things (Where to train, who else has done this sort of thing, etc). For the casual reader it is interesting to see where (In the USA) these women are working, some of the challenges faced etc. Some parts of the book became repetitive. I really don’t need to know where each of the women spent all of their summers training, where they went to university, and how many times they moved. What I would like to read more about instead are show more some of the challenges that are alluded to but never discussed in detail. For this book to be useful (and more interesting) it should go into more detail about the challenges these women faced (Setting up farms, encouraging local buying, setting up co-ops, being women, being minorities) and the steps they took to overcome them. Instead they mention that they had these issues, but do not focus on them. I can understand wanting to have an uplifting positive book, but if you leave out the details of the struggles it 1) Is less useful as a guide for others 2) Trivializes the hard work these women put in 3) Leads to book to be more of a catalogue of where the women studied and what they now own, rather than the story of how they managed to get there. This makes it less useful as a resource, and less interesting of a read than it could have been. Still well worth reading, but a bit more of the story would have been nice. show less

Farmer Jane is a series of brief (several pages each) profiles of women involved in some way with sustainable, local, or organic food; primarily farmers, but also chefs and activists involved in improving school lunches, or conditions for farmworkers, or other issues related to the modern American food supply. The focus on women is an interesting hook, and a refreshing antidote to the usual set of profiles of "people" who somehow always end up being 90% men, but is not intrusive. Each chapter is loosely organized around a group of women in similar roles, followed by a set of suggestions for what individuals can do to further the cause. For the average person (the "eater", rather than the farmer or the restaurant owner), most of these show more suggestions grew repetitive (go to a farmers' market, or subscribe to a CSA), but they were a useful reminder nevertheless.

Initially, the profiles of the various women were a bit repetitive; one small California farm operating a CSA is much like another, after all. This became less of an issue later in the book was less of an issue in the chapters on “Advocates for Social Change” and “Networks for Sustainable Food”, with profiles of women like Marion Kalb, working on bringing fresh foods to schoolchildren, and Jo Ann Baumgartner, working with farmers to try to make farms a better home for wildlife, but it did mean the book dragged initially.

Whether due to Costa's own experience (she lives in California) or simply because most of the nation's produce and especially most of the small organic farms are there (it's much more feasible to support a family by growing vegetables in California with a year-long growing season and affluent urban locals to sell to than in, say, Iowa), a disproportionate number of the women profiled are from California, but the stories are interesting and relevant nonetheless. The targeting of the end-of-chapter suggestions was the only "off" note about the book; the audience interested in a book like this would seem to be people who are already aware of the issues around food sustainability, who are already making an effort to eat locally, and who don't need the "Food 101" suggestions to shop at a farmer's market, but the suggestions for "eaters" were primarily at this fairly basic level. Eaters are voters, too, and I would have liked some suggestions aimed at political actions (like changing farm subsidies to be less about corn and soybeans, and more about people-food!) show less

This is basically a thoughtful collection of short biographies of women who, as the title says, change the way we eat. The biographies are sorted according to how that change is accomplished: by bringing farms and eaters together (e.g. through CSAs), by advocating (e.g. agains genetically modified food), by promoting local and seasonal food (e.g. as chef of a restaurant), or through urban farming. There's also a section on "the next generation of sustainable farmers". Each sections features a few women, with usually only a couple of pages (5 or so) devoted to each woman. Each section also has a brief introduction on the general topic.

This means a good breadth of coverage - so many women portraits to inspire, so many ways in which the show more way we eat can be changes. The tradeoff is that things aren't covered in great depth, but to me that's more a matter of individual preference than a flaw of the book. I consider myself pretty educated about food, food systems, local and sustainable eating etc., and I've read a lot of books about this, but this book definitely added something new. There's just not much out there from a feminine perspective, and so it's really refreshing to find this book.

I'd especially recommend this book to people interested in women's role in food systems, and to those looking for ideas for change. show less