A Leading Voice of Women in Agriculture

The president of the 35,000-member American Agri-Women stood at her kitchen sink slicing oranges, grapefruits and avocados for salad. The subject, as usual, was agriculture. And, as usual, Carolyn Leavens’ tone was adamant.

“We discovered what it was like to be dependent on oil. What if we had to rely on overseas countries for our food? Agriculture is not just another industry. It’s the industry that provides us with our food, shelter and clothing.”

She laughed, embarrassed at her intensity. “You can see I’m committed,” she said, taking a sip of cranberry-apple juice and looking out at the expanse of avocado trees surrounding the Leavens’ year-old wood-and-glass, solar-efficient home. It’s just that over the years farmers have been so, well, “misrepresented,” she declared.

Incorrect Image

“I think the mental image people have of farmers is out of step with 1985 reality. They see farmers in black and whites: farmers vs. people concerned with environment, farmers vs. people concerned with social conditions. They think we need to be taken care of, we’re uneducated. People don’t realize today that you have to be a businessman in order to keep working a farm.”

And the wives of farmers--women like Carolyn Leavens, whose family has 800 acres of avocados, lemons, oranges, limes and kiwi in Ventura County--have gotten mad and aren’t taking it anymore.

Consider the accomplishments of the American Agri-Women and its California affiliate, the 5,000-member California Women for Agriculture, since their founding in the mid ‘70s:

--Led by Doris Royal of Nebraska and Laura Lane of Pennsylvania, the American Agri-Women lobbied successfully for changes in federal inheritance tax law so that farms would not have to be sold when the husband died. The new legislation identifies and accepts the work women put into farms as valid claims to the land.

--Has been instrumental in stopping a number of local-state efforts at legislation that they believed would be harmful to the family farm system, including the farm labor initiative of 1976, Proposition 14.

--”Courted” Mayor Tom Bradley for four years to increase his awareness of the importance of agriculture in Los Angeles with the result that this year’s Mayor’s Breakfast was held at the Museum of Science and Industry to showcase the agriculture exhibit.

Political Actions

--Pushed election and appointment of a number of members to state and national positions: among them, just from California, Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas) to the State Assembly, Rose Ann Vuich (D-Dinuba) to the state Senate, Carol Hallett, Western director of Department of Interior.

--Was the first farm organization to create a report card scoring California legislators on the 10 highest priority agriculture bills, and released it a month before elections.

There’s more: farmer’s fairs, “Ag in the Schools,” “Adopt a Legislator” programs, endless speeches, appearances and, for Leavens, a travel schedule that has her zipping around the United States.

Leavens, 54, who served as the state affiliate (CWA) president before accepting a two-year term as American Agri-Women president, giggled as she related all this. It’s just that the group defies the traditional image of farm women, even the image these women had of themselves.

Just look at Carolyn Douglass Leavens: friendly, affably frank, sturdy and healthy-looking in her denim skirt and plaid shirt, a Washington state native who spent six years on a farm during the Depression and decided that the deprivations of that kind of life weren’t for her.

‘When You Fall in Love’

“Then I met Paul Leavens in college (Whitworth in Spokane) and he’d show me pictures of this land his family owned and tell me how he was going to make it work. I only half-believed him. But when you fall in love with somebody . . . .”

She is the prototypical farm wife: doing all the books while her husband worked in the field, raising four children (now aged 26 to 34 and all but one in some aspect of agriculture), canning and preserving every year, worrying about making ends meet and taking on the local distributorship of a farm equipment firm for extra income they needed with three kids in college at one time.

Competent? Definitely. Self-confident? Only on the farm.

“The first time I ever gave a speech, I was a basket case . . . The first time I ever had my congressman to dinner, I was terror-stricken.”

Political Creatures Now

Her friends were no different, she said. But now, much to their surprise, they’ve become political creatures, issue-oriented rather than pushing candidates, skilled at lobbying, meeting legislators, speaking before large groups, canvassing. Leavens herself has become an articulate, persuasive speaker.

Much to their surprise--heck, much to everyone’s surprise, she amended, including their husbands.

“For the most part, our husbands were for it (the political activity.) They knew we were doing it for them, for the industry. They just didn’t think it would work. But the basic thing that keeps us going is how do you know it won’t work unless you try?”

The changing attitudes that led to the birth of California Women for Agriculture were first articulated at a bridge game in Palm Desert. There was apparently less bridge than talk, however, as players--a few wives of local grape growers--lamented a local mom-and-pop grocery store that was being picketed because they carried Gallo wine.

According to Leavens, someone suggested picketing the pickets. The next day, the bridge club members and a few other women were down at the market carrying signs they’d made the night before. “Everyone went away,” Leavens said, “and the girls looked at each other and said, ‘Look what we’ve done, little farmers.’ ”

From this came the California Women for Agriculture.

Leavens heard about the still-unincorporated CWA in 1976, when she was contacted about setting up a strategy to fight the upcoming Proposition 14.

The timing was providential. Just as the agriculture industry was feeling the need to take a second look at itself, to become activists regarding its own role in society, Carolyn Leavens had reached that point common to many wives and mothers once their families are grown: “I was looking for something else. I needed to back away. But I still wanted to be in agriculture.”

Now she describes herself and the organizations she represents as “generic agriculture public relations people . . . Instead of being concerned with just one thing, like milk or kiwis or citrus, we’re marketing agriculture.”

So are a number of other agriculture-oriented organizations, some of which are networking and co-sponsoring projects with American Agri-Women.

Education Efforts

On pesticide education, for instance, there is general agreement and a number of public education programs. “We figured we might be able to make people understand if we have our members speaking to the issue, showing that as wives and mothers we’re concerned about their family’s health as well as pesticide,” Leavens said.

“People have to understand, we wouldn’t have fruits and vegetables were it not for chemicals.”

On other issues, particularly economics, the agriculture industry does not speak as one. Farmers in the Midwest and South are as different from those in California--where agriculture is the state’s largest industry--as, say, wheat from citrus.

Subsidy Battle

Farm subsidies is a classic battle. Most California farmers say they’d be just as happy without them, that they’d prefer to farm in a fair market situation, Leavens said. But California farmers have rich land on which a multitude of crops can grow. California farmers have options, can diversify.

In the South, however, the land is such that farmers can only look to tobacco and cotton as money-making crops, she said. “They just don’t have the options.” It’s the same in the Midwest, she added, except that land is prime for wheat and corn. “And when prices are low like now, they’re in a lot of pain.

“When I’m in the South, I’ve asked some pointed questions as to why they insist on hanging on to farm subsidies. Why don’t they get rid of it? But it’s like hanging on to a rabbit’s foot, I think. In the Midwest, people see what the subsidies have done to them and I think most realize the time for subsidies is gone. In the ‘40s it was a good thing. We all thought we were going to feed the world.”

What’s happened though, she observed, is that much of the world is feeding itself. American farmers are competing with farmers from Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, just to name a few countries, and thanks to lower labor costs, theses nations can grow the same products at lower costs. Inevitably, U.S. farmers must reduce their own numbers and to do that, she said, “we’ve got to get rid of the subsidies. And some people are scared to death.”

She sighed. It’s not a problem that’s going to be solved easily or soon. Easier, it seemed, to explain just what it is that farmers want.

“We want fairness. Nothing more than the opportunity to provide food for the nation’s needs, to get into the marketplace and do what we do best, that’s produce, without feeling the deck is stacked against us.”