Amy's work as a farmer

Amy was featured in Grow: Wisconsin’s Magazine for the Life Sciences talking about working with chefs and growing early and late-season crops. 

Follow Amy's Acre on Facebook and Instagram for mouth-watering photos of the food she grows. 

Women in farming

Want to learn about more women who are farmers? The Female Farmer projects shares stories and photos of women farming all over the country.

Amy learned about agriculture in Ecuador and Kenya when she was in college. Find out more about the female face of farming around the world.

More women are taking over family farms and women dominate urban farming in New York City,

The Women Food & Ag Network is a community of women in sustainable agriculture.

Want to start your own farm someday? The Department of Agriculture has a mentoring network for women in agriculture and also has a loan program targeted at women and minority farmers and ranchers.

How to get involved in farming and growing your own food

Want to start your own garden? Let’s Move has a handy guide. 

Have your school join the Edible Schoolyard Project  or find a community garden in your area. 

Green Guerillas in New York City has internships for high school and college students or you can volunteer at Hunger Task Force Farm.

You could also join Future Farmer’s of America if you live in a farming community.

Amy studied soil science and horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Public (and a few private) universities across the country have agriculture programs.

Visiting a farmer’s market

You can also support local farmer's by going to a farmer's market. Find one near you here, here, or here.

If you’re not in a city, you can always keep an eye out for roadside farmstands. Where Julia lives, farmstands have things like fresh tomatoes, zucchini, squash, and corn that was picked that day.  She loves the produce and being able to support people in my community.

Food security and nutrition

Learn more about where food banks are, who they serve, and how to help from Feeding America and keeping kids from going hungry from No Kid Hungry.

What is "food security" and who is food insecure?

Did you know? Half of the people Hunger Task Force serves are children. Amy and I talked about how hard Hunger Task Force works to provide a variety of fresh produce to the people it serves. But it’s not just quantity of produce; Hunger Task Force wants to give people vegetables that they actually want, especially kids who are picky eaters. Amy says, “making sure that the end user is involved in the process is really our best shot at trying to get it right.”

This input impacts their planning process: “We got a lot of feedback that it would be good if we had green beans for a longer period of the season. We can look at our yield data and say, well, we grew this many pounds per acre, and it looks like based on feedback we should have this many more pounds available for this many weeks. Then we can work back and figure out how much acreage to put into that crop.”

Did you know? A recent study showed that increasing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by $30 per month would help allow people to eat more vegetables, cook more at home, and eat less fast food.