NY Senator meets with women farmers

On Sunday July 20 graduates of the HMI's Beginning Farmers & Ranchers: Women in the Northeast  program as well as a wider group of NY women farmers gathered for a roundtable event with U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and New York State Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk. Twenty-five women farmers of all ages, stages and production, plus fifteen or so agency folks and local politicians were there to represent a diversity of experience at the Crossroads Brewery in Athens NY. They discussed affordable and secure access to land including wanting land held by non-profits to ensure that farmland will be farmed in perpetuity, access to capital for women farmers, migrant labor ,and  excessive regulations creating obstacles and high costs for slaughterhouses to exist. Senator Tkaczyk, a NY woman farmer herself, offered that access to capital is a major  obstacle for women farmers, and suggested looking for alternative lending institutions outside of banks. Senator Gillibrand noted that women have the gift of collaboration and can use it to support one another. Both Senator Tkaczyk and Senator Gillibrand will be following up with the group through an Agriculture working group