Agriculture’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
By Luke Edwards
It may be hard work, but it’s never been hard to convince Andrea Veldhuizen to head out to the barn.
The passion for agriculture and a strong work ethic instilled in her during early mornings with her dad to do the chores on their Niagara dairy farm has stayed with her into adulthood. And now the second generation chicken farmer considers herself lucky to pass the lessons she learned as a kid onto her own children.
“It’s a collection of moments where I watch my kids and the ability they have to grow up and gain this hard work ethic, to understand where their food comes from, to participate in the process of providing food,” Veldhuizen said during a webinar hosted by Farm and Food Care Ontario last month. Ahead of International Women’s Day and in the midst of a year dubbed by the United Nations as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, Veldhuizen was among an all-woman panel that discussed both the challenges and opportunities for women in agriculture.
“Often they go unrecognized. Women farmers are really central to food security, nutrition and resilience,” said Kelly Daynard, executive director of FFCO, who moderated the event.
Veldhuizen was joined by first generation Norfolk apple farmer and agritourism operator Amanda Dooney and Julie Maw, a Lambton County woman whose family grows soybeans, corn and wheat, runs a seed dealership and offers custom farming services.
While their stories and journeys are unique, the three speakers found plenty of common ground, including a focus on family and the idea that farming is more than just a way to earn money.
“Agriculture is a lot more than a job, it’s an identity. I often say it’s a lifestyle. It’s the way my family’s chosen to live,” Veldhuizen said.
While it is a lifestyle they’ve chosen, that doesn’t mean it’s without challenges. Juggling countless responsibilities on the farm and within the family can mean there aren’t enough hours in the day. There are different approaches to making it all work.
For Maw, structure and organization are key. She called her calendar her most important tool on the farm.
“Our house runs like a ship, we’re very organized,” she said.
“Balance isn’t about just treating everything equal in size but about equal in weight.”
Dooney and Veldhuizen talked about ensuring there’s down time, either through finding little moments here and there to practice self care or having non-negotiables like a regular family meal time.
“Often as women we care for ourselves last, and that actually doesn’t do us well,” said Veldhuizen.
Sharing the responsibility is also important, not just to reduce their workload, but to teach that work ethic that’s so important on farms.
“It’s better for me to empower my daughter to make dinner one night, or my son to do some chores,” said Veldhuizen.
That approach will pay dividends as the children grow up.
“I think farm kids are the best kind of kids, they have an amazing work ethic,” Dooney said.
But while they admit to challenges that can be somewhat unique to women, and a desire to see more women get involved, the speakers mostly said they just wanted to be treated like any male counterpart.
“Just treat us normally,” said Maw.
“I don’t want to sit on a board just because I’m a woman. I want to add value,” added Veldhuizen.
Likewise, Dooney said it’s important to recognize the women who are equal partners on the farm. For most of the time she may be stuck at a computer doing administrative work - though Dooney said she’d often prefer to be out in the orchards - but that work is still vital to the farm’s operation.
“We’re not just helpers on the farm, we do a lot. We are operators,” she said.
“We need to get away from that and recognize women do have a really integral role on the farm.”
Before the UN announced 2026 to be the International Year of the Woman Farmer, the Grape Growers of Ontario named Tawse vineyard manager Augusta Van Muyen as the 2026 Grape King. Only a handful of women have received the honour.
Van Muyen said there are very few women who are actual vineyard managers in Niagara.
“But there are so many women behind the scenes who make things happen, who are farmers, but not in the traditional sense of farming,” she said.
They could be the people like Dooney who take care of the important administrative work, or researchers like OMAFA’s Wendy McFadden-Smith or the women at CCOVI whose research helps make farmers’ lives easier.
Getting more women into the industry will only be a further benefit, Van Muyen said.
“The barrier is not knowing the opportunity more than not being welcomed into the industry,” she said.
During the FCCO webinar, a question was asked about the future of farmers, suggesting that today if someone was to ask a kindergarten student to draw a farmer they’d likely still draw a picture of a man with a pitchfork.
Veldhuizen, who multiple times during the webinar stressed the importance of ag education for a public that’s increasingly distant from food production, said that’s already a pretty outdated idea of farming. Teaching the public what farming looks like in the 21st century is key. And as the Ontario farmer becomes more diverse, her hope is that the public will gain an understanding, and appreciation of that diversity.
“I’d like to think one day a kindergartner will draw a picture of me, but hopefully it’s just a variety of people,” she said.
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