Farmers Helping Farmers by Nancy K. Berlage

Author:Nancy K. Berlage [Berlage, Nancy K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Rural, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780807163306
Google: 4cDYCwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 27191628
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2016-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

GENDERING POULTRY PRODUCTION AND SCIENCE

Some women forcefully worked to halt an advancing separate spheres ideology that starkly constructed home work as “domestic” and farm work as “production.” Bureau women staked an ongoing claim to dominion over poultry raising and turned it into a specialized agricultural production area that fit into the new terminology. In doing so, they sought to ward off challenges to their control over the chicken yard delivered by males who understood poultry’s profitability. Women attempted to sustain their claim to that territory. With their poultry and egg production, women sought to legitimize their work in the barnyard, sharpen their skills with university science, and become a force in the very public world of cooperative marketing.

As with other issues, literary efforts served as a safe place to voice concerns about poultry, as did a poem printed in an Illinois county farm bureau periodical:

The County Farm Advisor came to our house one day,

He culled out all our chickens to see which ones would lay,

He talked about the keel bone, capacity and such,

He said, “Keep this hen, but that one doesn’t amount to much,

Sell off the non-producers, keep only hens that lay,

A lazy hen doesn’t earn her board, she’ll never pay her way.”

So now, Old Hen, get busy, and know what you’re about

Or the Farm Advisor will get you if you don’t watch out.17

Certainly, the bureau women who read this poem could not help but discern its message about the benefits of extension work. But could they also have read this as a metaphor for their work in poultry production—as a narrative that encouraged them to implement science and that warned of the consequences if they did not? Some poultry project specialists were women in this period, particularly in Illinois, but this poem depicted the expert county agent as male. While the audience is not specified, many women were involved in poultry projects; moreover, the use of the word “our” to connote ownership suggests the poem was speaking to both wives and husbands. The “old hen”—the wife or even the home adviser—could have read this as a veiled warning that she needed to look sharp to her business if male agents and producers (or scientists) were not to usurp her.

Many bureau women attempted to retain a niche in agricultural production by specializing in poultry. They emphasized their productive capabilities and the importance of this work. Perhaps they felt that, if they did not “pay their keep,” like the old unproductive hen, they would not “amount to much,” particularly in a national culture that valued expertise and profit-making ability. They would be “sold off,” not literally of course, but displaced from poultry work—one of the few types of agricultural work that could still be claimed as “women’s work.” The male farm adviser could easily appear to be the villain who would “get” female producers if they did not watch out. Like the “old hen,” the farm wife had to “get busy,” and “know what” she was about by learning the principles of scientific production.

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