“How Much Does Property Cost Up There?”: Exploring the Relationship between Women, Sustainable Farming, and Rural Gentrification in the US

AbstractUsing in-depth interviews with women engaged in sustainable farming in the western United States, this project explores an unanticipated finding: migration from an urban area to rural “Prairie County” was necessary for these farmers to secure farm land and sustain their farming operations. This article interrogates the role of migration in women’s access to farmland as both an economic and cultural phenomenon. My findings highlight the necessity of migration for women’s participation in sustainable farming and suggest that women’s success in sustainable farming may align with the processes of rural gentrification, by which cultural and economic in-migrants amplify their social privilege and transform the values and economy of rural communities. This project, then, situates gender as a key structure to understanding both the classed dynamics of sustainable agriculture and rural gentrification.