Global recognition for women farmers in 2026

May 07, 2024

By Farms.com

The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer. This initiative, championed by the USDA and endorsed by more than 100 countries, aims to elevate the status of women in agriculture and tackle the challenges of global food security.

During the announcement, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small underscored the pivotal role women play in agriculture across the globe. They stressed the importance of providing women farmers with equal access to resources, education, and leadership opportunities.

The focus of the International Year of the Woman Farmer is to promote sustainable practices and enhance the representation of women in decision-making processes within the agricultural sector. This initiative will work towards more resilient food systems where women are key drivers of innovation and development.

The USDA has committed to transforming the national food system to be more inclusive and supportive of women farmers. This involves creating fair markets and enhancing local production capabilities, ensuring that women are not only participants but leaders in shaping the future of agriculture.

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators