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Minnesota lawmakers hear personal accounts for Women in Agriculture Day at committee hearing
Summary
Farm women and extension educators told the Senate Agriculture Committee about rural broadband gaps, mental‑health resources, childcare and farm economics while marking Women in Agriculture Day.
Women in Agriculture Day programming opened the March 24, 2025, hearing of the Minnesota Senate Committee on Agriculture, Veterans, Broadband, and Rural Development with producers and University of Minnesota Extension educators sharing first‑hand accounts of running farms and farm enterprises.
The witnesses emphasized the role women play across Minnesota agriculture and highlighted several recurring concerns, including rural broadband reliability, access to veterinarians, farm financial pressures and childcare shortages.
Suzanne Hendricks, an Extension educator from Fort Ripley, said Minnesota has about 35,623 women in farming and that women manage more than 9,000,000 acres of Minnesota farmland. “Over half of the farms in Minnesota have a female working on their farm,” Hendricks said, and described the Women in Ag Network’s work providing production, legal, human‑resources and marketing education and facilitating peer connections.
Several women farmers told personal stories. Gail Donkers, who farms in a multi‑generation operation that raises soybeans, corn, alfalfa, hogs, cattle and several sheep enterprises, described tight crop margins — citing a projected net return for soybeans of a negative $189 per acre and a negative $126.66 per acre for corn — and said access to veterinarians is “a huge concern” for livestock owners.
Jeanne Anderson of Simple Living Family Farms in Montevideo described the difficulty of balancing on‑farm work with the need to secure off‑farm employment for health insurance and the limited availability and cost of childcare in rural communities.
Jessica Westrock and Trista Gurri, who operate Sunflower Farms, described running a new turkey operation and urged policies that expand market access and support biosecurity; Westrock noted that Minnesota leads the nation in turkey production and called for continued attention to avian and poultry disease responses.
Committee members praised the presentations and said the event offered useful perspectives on the family‑and‑community dimension of farming. Senator Mary Kunish was thanked by multiple presenters for initiating Women in Agriculture Day at the Capitol.
The committee moved from the Women in Ag presentations to its regular business after the testimony; no formal committee action was taken on the presentations themselves.
