Empowering Women in Agriculture
April 11, 2023

Recently, I took part in a webinar to promote our new Building Resiliency pilot program – which aims to create more crop insurance agents and adjusters in underserved communities.

One of our partners in carrying out this program, Annie’s Project, hosted the event and members of the Risk Management Education Division gave a presentation and answered questions. More than 70 individuals attended the virtual event this week to learn more. Clearly, there is great interest.

Annie’s is a national non-profit that has been empowering women in agriculture for nearly 20 years and reaches over 18,000 underserved producers with a large community of facilitators and educators. They work in risk management, overall farm/ranch/growing management, networking and leadership development. Although they are women-centered, they welcome and served anyone with an interest in their programming, education, and activities.

RMA through partnership with Annie's Project and other organizations will train, credential, and establish a pipeline of crop insurance agents and adjusters within socially disadvantaged communities. In fact, this week we also met with an professional insurance group to explore the development of a curriculum to train loss adjusters.

Attendees at the webinar this week had some great questions about qualifications and considerations for entering the career field. I was really pleased to see the high turnout and I’m sure we will have no shortage of applications this year.

 
Doris Mold, Co-CEO of Annie's Project

I spoke with one of the event organizers, Doris Mold, Co-CEO of Annie’s Project, to find more about the good work they are doing. Among other things, Doris shares duties of working with a board, advisory committee, administrative staff, program coordinators, facilitators, and other stakeholders across the U.S. in running all aspects of Annie’s Project. She also currently teaches Farm and Agri-Business Management at the University of Minnesota.

Marcia: Doris, we appreciate your support this week and for helping RMA to implement this new program!
Doris: It is a pleasure, and it is what we do. We educate and empower women in agriculture, using a methodology that builds confidence, develops networks and creates lifelong learners among women farmers, ranchers, growers, landowners, and agriculturalists. We help them develop skills and knowledge in risk management/business management and they have the confidence to put what they have learned and gained to use.

Marcia: I can tell that you are passionate about your mission. What is it that you love about the work you do with Annie’s Project?
Doris: Most everything – the changes that we help people make in their lives and businesses. Helping people to be more successful, whether it is helping a new farmer/rancher/grower or seeing a multi-generation farm/ranch being successfully passed to the next generation or helping a landowner better understand their options and responsibilities. Working with an incredible pool of talented colleagues that have a shared passion – is wonderful. As a team we multiply our results much more than if we were leading the organization alone.

Marcia: I read a little bit about the history of Annie’s Project, and it has been around for quite some time now.
Doris: The work of many has helped Annie’s Project start from a class of ten women 20 years ago to over 19,000 graduates across the U.S. The exciting thing is that the need for our work – empowering women and increasing their skill and understanding of how to better manage the risks in agriculture is expanding. The demand is increasing and with it will be more people and farms, ranches, growing operations and other agricultural ventures that are better able to manage the risks that they face and this will ultimately help them be more sustainable and successful in the long run. Annie’s Project has enabled many producers who have faced a major calamity such as the loss of a key farming/ranching partner to work through the loss and continue with the operation even when others told them that it could not be done.

Marcia: We were so happy to learn that Annie’s Project wanted to assist RMA with recruiting more agents and loss adjusters. What is it about this RMA pilot that appeals to Annie’s Project?
Doris: It will increase the pool of trained crop insurance agents and loss adjustors in underserved areas and offer producers the opportunity to avail themselves of crop insurance services that they might not have been previously aware of. It also offers another way to provide producers who participate in the pilot with knowledge and skills that can be marketable and create additional opportunities for their financial stability.

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Doris did a wonderful job organizing this week’s event and I enjoyed meeting her and learning of her background in agriculture. Like me she is also a farmer. She has also worked on women’s ag leadership projects and served on a USDA Ag Statistics Advisory Committee and on several expert panels on behalf of USDA.

I am grateful to Annie’s Project for the opportunity to present this week and for all their first-rate support of this initiative. If you know of anyone that might be interested in this opportunity to better support underserved producers, please pass on this registration form from Annie’s Project: https://forms.gle/B9m8WtTcvNtmeFAm8

– Marcia

Marcia Bunger is the Administrator of USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA). Prior to her appointment, she served as a County Executive Director for USDA’s Farm Service Agency. A native South Dakotan, Bunger is also the owner and operator of a 2000-acre farm, a cum laude graduate of Augustana College, and the first member of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and first woman to serve as RMA Administrator.