Tour de female farmers

A researcher who has cycled more than 2,000 miles for her PhD on visions for the future of farming is set to complete her epic journey across England’s diverse agricultural landscapes.

Veronica White left Land’s End in Cornwall on 12 April for an exploration of the nation’s farms and food producers, seeking to interview women in every corner of the land about their experiences and visions for the future.

This Saturday (5 July), Veronica will reach the Scottish border at Gretna Green, to complete her Farming Futures Cycle Tour. En route, she has met women who work across a wide range of farming types and scales: from market gardens producing fruit and vegetables for their local communities, to large-scale commercial horticulture, arable, and dairy farms supplying supermarkets across the country.

Over those 85 days, Veronica, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Exeter, has documented a range of issues facing farming communities, as well as their hopes for the future of farming and food production in England.

“It’s clear that, even across farming types and scales, there are several themes that arise in almost every interview,” says Veronica, a second-year PhD candidate in Exeter’s Department of Geography.

“Whether you are an organic dairy in Devon or an arable farm in Cambridgeshire, the uncertainties presented by a changing policy landscape and climate extremes are making it increasingly difficult to plan for the future.

“The importance of educating the public, moving towards national food self-sufficiency, and farming with nature were other themes that came up regularly in my interviews with farm women.

"All of these are tied into visions for the future that see farmers respected by the public and government, with consumers choosing to buy local, seasonal food, and land being used to produce food while protecting the natural environment. Importantly, the visions described by my participants rarely reflect the high-tech, farmer-less images we often associate with ‘future farming'.”

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s South West Doctoral Training Partnership, Veronica’s PhD focuses on the perspectives of women in agricultural communities across different geographic and farming contexts.

She has interviewed 50 women of all ages across more than 40 different farming sites, ranging from the wives and daughters of farmers to those heading up businesses and community organisations.

“One of the best things about this experience has been seeing the incredible diversity of farms and hearing how people got into farming,” she says.

“While the women I spoke to held a range of on- and off-farm roles, they often sit at the very heart of the farming business. They described the specific challenges they face as women in the farming industry, but also the ways they are driving forward changes to make their farms more financially and environmentally sustainable – to help contribute towards building the futures they envision.”