The Goal: A Stamp of Their Own

They settled the West and milked the cows and had the children and grew the crops and kept the books and held it all together in the face of drought, disease, foreclosure, and corporate agribusiness.

More than 130,000 women are full owners of about 26 million acres of American farmland. Another 23,000 are part-owners, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And tens of thousands more work on farms.

But apparently none of this is good enough for the U.S. Postal Service.

Four years ago, the post office rebuffed a request for a stamp commemorating the American farm woman, citing “a lack of national interest.” But these are not women to be dismissed, rebuffed, or messed with generally, and they are fighting back. The 50,000-member American Agri-Women organization has more than 9,000 signatures favoring a stamp, and support from a Wisconsin congressman.

“It’s a great idea and apparently one whose time has come,” says Carolyn Leavens, who has worked on her Ventura County family citrus and avocado farm for more than 40 years.

“People need to be aware of where their food comes from and the enormous role women have played in farming.”

“There’s Tweety Bird to Frankenstein, but no stamps for women in agriculture,” says group historian Florence Rachwal from her 590-acre dairy farm in Weyauwega, Wis.

Rachwal, the point person for this stamp initiative, was more irked than disappointed by a 1995 letter from postal service Manager of Stamp Development James Tolbert, who wrote: “There is a lack of national interest and historical perspective to support a postal stamp honoring farm women.”

The stamp idea was put on the American Agri-Women back burner for a while, but Rachwal wouldn’t let it rest.

The 73-year-old farmer says, “Women produce [half] the food grown worldwide, women do [most] of the bookkeeping on the farm and 98%” of the women are running farm errands.

“That’s Florence,” says Leavens, who is a past president of American Agri-Women as well as founding president of the Ventura County branch of California Women for Agriculture.

“I met her in the ‘70s at one of our conventions and she was working like nobody’s business, and she hasn’t stopped since.”

Nor have many of the estimated 35,000 women farmers in California. The number of women operating farms has increased, experts say. California farm women have been aggressive in circulating petitions to make this shift a bit more visible.

“The response has been very positive,” says Cherry Ishimatsu, founding president of California Women for Agriculture and a retired Indio farmer.

“Women and men, everyone thinks we deserve it. There’s a misconception that farming is a man’s game and we want to change that.”

“If Elvis can have one [a stamp],” she adds, “we can too.”

“Women have always been a part of agriculture, going back to pioneer women,” says Linda Macedo, a Merced dairy farmer.

The stamp, these women believe, will make them more visible.

Farmers are such a small part of the population,” Macedo says. “It’s about 1% here in California, and there’s a big gap between those who live in urban areas and those who produce their food.”

Still, California is among the nation’s top dairy states, and produces half of the country’s fruit and vegetables. “But when people think of California, they think of Hollywood,” Macedo says.

The postal service’s 12-member Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee may revisit a women in agriculture stamp proposal, says spokesman Don Smeraldi. “But in the past, it wasn’t recommended,” he adds.

In June, Rep. Mark Green (R-Wis.) urged Congress to help American Agri-Women (which is celebrating its 25th anniversary at a November convention in Wisconsin).

“We’re not giving up,” says Rachwal, the Wisconsin dairy farmer.