The United Nations named 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer to honor women’s often overlooked, essential roles across global food systems.
In Northeast and Central Pennsylvania, the region boasts of innovative, young female farmers and multi-generational operations that keep local food systems diverse and secure.
State Department of Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said in an interview at the Pennsylvania Farm Show the state will highlight women in agriculture as part of its celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.
You cannot run agriculture in this state today without recognizing the “women who are primary decision makers,” Redding said last month in Harrisburg.
Women serve the agricultural industry “as pioneers, as innovators, as company owners, as farmers and really, [as] anchors in America,” Redding said.
WVIA News spoke to a few farmers from the region about their experiences in the industry, their hopes for the future of Pennsylvania agriculture and advice for women inspired to tend the land.
Tannis Kowalchuk: Willow Wisp Organic Farm and Farm Arts Collective in Wayne County
For Tannis Kowalchuk, her journey into agriculture started not on a field, but in the kitchen.
“The real seed of it, pardon the pun, was through cooking. I was cooking at an artist's residence in Sullivan County (in New York,) and I was buying a lot of food, and it dawned on me that I was in a rural community and that I should look into who my local farmers were,” Kowalchuk said.
Kowalchuk connected with Gorzynski Ornery Farm, a produce farm in New York and met Greg Swartz, who she later married. Swartz had finished a seven-year apprenticeship on a farm in the area and was looking to buy his own farm. The couple moved across the Delaware River to Wayne County where they started Willow Wisp Organic Farm.
Willow Wisp is a 25-acre vegetable and flower farm in Damascus Township. It houses Farm Arts Collective, an agricultural and environmental sciences theater company that Kowalchuk started in 2018.
Kowalchuk runs the farm’s flower and bouquet operation, which she said diversifies Willow Wisp’s sales, but also attracts insects to promote biosecurity. The farm employs 15 people during the high season and staffs farm markets in four locations in New York and Pennsylvania.
The farm offers jobs over the summer for aspiring high school or college-aged farmers to get hands-on experience at entry level farming wages.
“It's really great that young people want to get a farm job. It's not easy, it's very hot, it's hard work, but they do it. It's really wonderful,” Kowalchuk said.
The future of the agricultural industry depends on young, women farmers.
Kowalchuk said people need to break down their conception of what a farmer looks like to help farmers succeed in their communities and through policies that affect farmers’ resources.
“I hope to see that women in any vocation … [are] valued equal to a man's contribution in that field,” Kowalchuk said.
When you picture a farmer, “you’re going to see a fella in overalls … with a pitchfork,” Kowalchuk said. But in many traditional cultures, women were the ones who tended the land as men hunted for resources.
Statistically, women produce more than 50% of food grown in the world, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. In some parts of the world, it’s 80%.
Kowalchuk’s Farm Arts Collective is also working on a new show that will center around women's connection to the land, “Scattered Seeds of Troy,” which is inspired by the anti-war Greek Tragedy, “The Trojan Women.”
The play departs from the source text and asks after the Trojan War, what seed does each Trojan woman take with her when she is forced to leave her land and start a new life, Kowalchuk said.
Kowalchuk said she wants to explore how the power to plant and grow seeds is “an incredible source of empowerment and potential for a future.”
The show will run from Nov. 12 to 15 at Willow Wisp Organic Farm.
Hayley Painter: Painterland Farms in Tioga County
Fourth-generation farmer Hayley Painter’s agricultural roots run deep.
She grew up running around her family’s dairy farm with her siblings and 13 cousins in Westfield Township, a small agricultural hub in Tioga County.
Painter said Westfield has “more cows and cousins than there are people in the town … but the town is very close knit.” Painter and her neighbors would always get up early to tend to their animals before feeding themselves in the morning.
“Then we would enjoy a big meal and figure out what we were going to do for the day and … conquer that. We were flexible, we were gritty, we were collaborative, we were community oriented, we were wild and free,” Painter said.
But Painter said the dairy industry is volatile. Shifting market interests such as a growing focus on beef production and a greater reliance on older cows and shrinking replacement pipeline strain the industry.
Farmers work hard to tend the land and yet face uncertainty on whether they will get paid at the end of the day.
“That's the reality of being a dairy farmer all throughout the country, but especially here in the Northeast [United States] … We had to … create a stable milk market. And so that's what my sister and I really set our vision out to in order to have the life we want, we have to create that stability,” she said.
“While setting out on that journey, we also realized in order for this to be sustainable, we needed to connect our world to the farm … and the farm back to the world,” said Painter.
She and her sister Stephanie started to look into yogurt production in 2018 and launched Painterland Sisters in 2022 to keep their farm profitable for generations to come.
Stephanie Painter was unavailable for an interview as she recently gave birth to her third child.
Now in stores throughout the country, Painterland Sisters is a growing PA Preferred Organic brand and the sisters were featured in Forbes’ “30 Under 30 - Food & Drink 2024 List.”
Painterland Sisters sells organic Icelandic skyr yogurt, which Hayley Painter said is higher in protein and lower in sugar. One of Painterland’s target markets is mothers with young children, so each cup of yogurt has a coloring page which is revealed by pulling back the backs of the labels.
Painter said her experiences as both a farmer and a woman shapes her connection to the community as she can teach consumers where their food comes from and act as a female role model for young women interested in the field.
“Being women in Ag (agriculture), it shows a level of trust and caretaker ability … We’re all here on Mother Earth trying to support her. [We] use dairy cows. They’re all female. We're providing nutrient-dense products to a mother to nourish her kids,” she said.
“It's all interconnected, and ‘from a mother to a mother, we got you,’ is what my sister likes to say,” Painter said.
Women can get involved in all different parts of the industry, from field work to running equipment, from agricultural research to managing a business, Painter said.
Painter said farmers need to inspire future generations to protect Pennsylvania’s family farms. Her focus is on expanding the state’s dairy industry, but she said all sectors of Pennsylvania’s agriculture need support to thrive.
Liz Krug: Endless Roots Farm in Lackawanna County
Social worker turned first-generation farmer Liz Krug fell in love with agriculture while studying for her master’s degree, where she connected with local food organizations.
“I found food as the ultimate connector. It connects us to the land, to each other, and to this future that we hope to see. So, that was really what brought me into it (agriculture) and continues to inform the way I farm today,” Krug said.
Krug started farming 15 years ago and spent the last 13 in Pennsylvania. She and her husband, Mike, were offered to start Fullers Overlook Farm for the Fuller family, and were later able to start their own business after the family donated the land to Penn State University.
Now Endless Roots Farm, Liz and Mike Krug sell seasonal vegetables and serve as a hub for other farms’ products on their website. In the winter, the farm grows root crops such as sweet potatoes and beets, while the Krugs will harvest fair weather plants such as tomatoes and zucchini in the summer.
Liz Krug said the agricultural space greatly improved for women over the last 10 years.
“I think that we've come a long way. Honestly, I think that as women farmers, we have created stronger networks. We're often the ones that are new and beginning farmers. [We are] starting farms, feeding our communities, having our food stay locally, and I find it an honor and a privilege to be able to do that and connect with these amazing women throughout our state [and] throughout our country that do the same thing,” Krug said.
She hopes that as more women get involved in agriculture, the nation will see stronger regional food systems.
Regional food systems comprise everything from farm to table in a given community or region. They keep more food dollars in local communities and, in rural areas, support business opportunities that attract young people back home.
Krug said stronger food systems are vital to national security and USDA should invest in infrastructure grants for small, regional farmers to protect local communities.
She also pushed for more funding for specialty crops from USDA. Localized farms have more freedom to produce different varieties of produce, like by growing five different kinds of lettuce instead of the single kind that is available at the grocery store because locally grown crops can be quickly transported from farm-to-table.
Small farmers can be more creative with their products.
USDA announced in December it would approve $11 billion in bridge funding for farmers who produce row crops like corn and soybeans and $1 billion for specialty crops not included in the larger list.
It “is a very, very small amount. We've traditionally been very underfunded,” Krug said.
She said she’s heard from different lawmakers more support for regional food systems, so she hopes to see progress for small farmers.
But as a woman in the industry, Krug said she found her happiness and hopes others will be inspired to plant their own garden.
“I find just such joy and pride in feeding my community and being amongst other female growers that do the same. I've had other careers in my life, and this is truly one of the highlights of what I do,” Krug said.
