ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
In today’s world, farm women play an active role in all aspects of financial and risk management of the farm, and the changing dynamics and economics of the farm operation and household lead to the changing roles women play on the farm.
The Women Managing the Farm (WMF) program helps farm women to be successfully prepared to participate in multiple roles by having the training, risk management tools and professional resources available them.
Feb. 13 and 14, the 21st annual Women Managing the Farm Conference will take place at Manhattan’s Hilton Garden Inn and Conference Center, and co-chair LaVell Winsor said women from across the state and elsewhere come together to hear from keynote speakers and participate in breakout sessions, all in an effort to bring additional material to those who attend.
“We try to make it educational, uplifting, practical things they can take back to their farm or ranch that’s helpful, and it’s also a really great environment,” she said. “There’s a lot of people who network, become friends, share tips with one another of things that work on their farm or ranch or tools they use.”
Winsor said a large planning team helps to put the conference together.
“Several of the commodity organizations across Kansas, corn, soybeans, wheat, milo/sorghum, the Beef Council, several large banks, Farm Credit, the Bankers Association, K-State and some of the other universities are also very involved,” she said. “One of these folks will provide speakers as well. NRCS and FSA and so on, there’s just a large group of people who’ve been on the planning committee that help put together great educational material for this group.”
Among the keynote speakers is Kristy Archuleta, whom Winsor said was involved in the Women Managing the Farm Conference’s beginnings two decades ago.
“She’s going to come back to talk about some of the beginnings,” she said. “Professionally, she speaks a lot on finances, particularly couples. She has a lot of knowledge in the agricultural world because that’s her background.”
Carrie Williams will talk about the global and local view of grain supply and demand, and Winsor said Williams will go into much detail about this topic.
A pair of K-State Research and Extension agents from Southwest Kansas, Nancy Honig from Stevens County and West Plains Extension District of Scott and Finney Counties Director Carol Ann Crouch, will present the program, “Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate?” which focuses on dividing sentimental items amongst heirs.
The last keynote speaker will be Matt Rush, who will talk about managing generations, how different generations communicate, how they take in information and how they put that information back out.
“That’s very important to our families because many of them are multi-generational,” Winsor said.
Outside of the keynote speakers, conference attendees can take part in a variety of breakout sessions.
“There are five different breakout times where people can choose topics that are of interest to them,” Winsor said. “They might want to choose a topic that’s more production focused, or maybe it’s more record keeping focused. Maybe they have something that’s a farm to table thing, and maybe it’s some sort of risk management thing. People can mix and match the breakout sessions as much as they would like to.”
For the second year, the WMF Conference is featuring a tour, and Winsor said this year’s tour promises to be even better than the first one in 2024.
“We have Extension agents who are lined up and ready to do tours commuting to the conference,” she said. “One of those begins in Hays. People can either jump in and ride if they pre-sign up, or they can caravan with the group. They’ll stop at some sites along the way.”
One of the WMF committee members works for a state agritourism group, and Winsor said the member has set up stops along the tour.
“People who are closer to Manhattan, they can also do a tour around the Manhattan area,” she said. “The third option for that pre-conference is we will actually have a sit down pre-session, which is going to be focusing on women in the middle – the aspect of women who are taking care of their parents who are aging, but they also have kids at home who they are taking care of and managing both sides of that. We create some more awareness around some resources to help their aging parents.”
In the tour’s first year, Winsor said three routes were taken, and she said those taking the tour find places they have always wanted to see, but also get a little flavor of things of local interest.
“All of them have a little of agricultural twist to them as well,” she said.
Winsor said creating awareness is the primary focus of the tour.
“Hopefully, the folks who participate in those tours, they get to know each other a little better heading into the conference,” she said. “They’re together for two straight days. The people who attend this conference get to know each other well. There’s many people who come time and time again. It’s like coming back and seeing friends again.”
Winsor said WMF leaders have gotten great feedback from those have attended the conference over the years.
“Over the years, we’ve tweaked things to make sure we’re providing information that is both relevant to farms, helps them to be more aware of things they need to know about or take away tools to improve the things they’re doing on their own farm,” she said. “That’s the value we hope we provide, and along with that, there’s a lot of networking that goes on about how does this work on your farm. People can take away something they can improve their own farm with. I think a lot of people who attend feel they are very much investing in themselves and their farm by attending.”
Winsor said the creation of topics at the conference comes from a curriculum team.
“People can submit proposals, and they go through that and make sure they’re filling in all the areas we have either had requests to have information on or those areas we know in the past have been highly sought after as topics for information,” she said.
With an aging population in the agriculture industry, Winsor said many producers are starting the process of turning the farm over to the next generation, and this number increases with each passing year.
“My husband and I are in our early 50s, and we’re already starting to think about that for our children coming back to the farm,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of farms that tend to do that. They’re tending to think about how do we do this as we go forward. We try to provide resources, whether that be legal, financial, communication, all of those pieces to help people to go along the way in making those decisions.”
To help with the transition of the farm from one generation to the next, Winsor said there are some parts of the conference geared toward succession planning.
“That’s always a very desired topic, and those breakouts fill up very quickly,” she said. “We always try to have that information available.”
To register for the WMF Conference, visit www.womenmanagingthefarm.com, and a registration link can be found at the top of the home page. Those who register can also find an agenda for the conference, as well as bios of the presenters.
Winsor emphasized the conference is not just for women who are sole managers of a farm operation.
“The background of this conference was women who have been put in the unfortunate or unexpected position of suddenly needing to manage their farm,” she said. “There are women who are the main producers who attend. There’s women who primarily are the bookkeepers. There’s women who have an off-farm job often to provide the health insurance for the farm, but they’re involved nights and weekends. There’s women who are absentee landowners. It’s for women who are engaged in farming in any which way, and there’s content available that will be helpful to any of those demographics.”
