Women In Agriculture

Mar 11, 2026

By Tatum Gogna

As we celebrate Women’s History Month this March, we reflect on how women’s roles in agriculture have changed. While once women mostly just worked hard planting seed and harvesting crops, their role has evolved to also helping shape innovation and resilience in agriculture today. This feature spotlights just a handful of women faculty members in the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources and its Experiment Station and Extension units working in plant-focused disciplines. It provides a glimpse into their leadership and expertise cultivating the future of agriculture by driving cutting-edge research, mentoring the next generation of plant scientists, and supporting agricultural communities across Nevada and beyond.

Melinda Yerka

Assistant Professor Department of Agriculture, Veterinary & Rangeland Sciences; Experiment Station Yerka and her research team have unveiled 200 sorghum varieties that could be a gamechanger in the food, brewery, dairy feed and biofuel industry. Preliminary research underscores their exceptional drought tolerance, with some varieties also exhibiting record levels of protein and digestible starch.

Source : unr.edu

Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.