Female farmer.
Credit: Impact Photography

While globalization and industrialization of the food system has resulted in fewer farms and farmers, the number of women farmers in the U.S. is increasing—and they’re fighting against a system that fails to serve them and their communities. Women are taking control of their food systems by farming, organizing in their communities, and advocating for systemic policy change that can create food systems that are better for farmers, workers, their communities, and our planet. Despite an increase in the number of women farmers, however, there is not a parallel trend in representation or power; women rarely control or hold power in the agriculture and food industry as a whole, and exploitation is rampant, especially among women of color.

Let us delve further into how patriarchy is integral to our food system as we know it—most notably characterized by 795 million chronically undernourished people in the world, most of which are women and girls (despite the fact that women participate in the production and processing of food at roughly equal rates […]