Mainebiz

V O L . X X I X N O. X I I M AY 2 9 , 2 0 2 3 10 L O C A L LY G ROW N I t's the first harvest day at Liberation Farms in rural Wales, where Habiba Salat and Maryan Mohamed are tending their crops in green- houses lush with leafy green vegetables. "A good harvest, yes," Mohamed says of her spinach yield this sunny May morning. Far from their eastern African homeland in war-torn Somalia, each woman leads a five-person Iskashito, or cooperative, on land jointly operated by the Lewiston-based Somali Bantu Community Association, and the Agrarian Trust, a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit that supports land access for next-generation farmers. "It is a way of feeding others, and something I can give back to the community," Salat says. "If I take a pay- check, that's limited to me. But when I produce, that's affecting other people's lives and my family, too." Outside the greenhouse, Salat enjoys interacting with customers at farmers markets in Yarmouth and Norway, as does Christine Pompeo twice a week in Portland. e South Sudan native grows African and American vegetables in Falmouth on the Hurricane Valley incubator farm run by another Maine nonprofit called Cultivating Community. When selling her wares, Pompeo frequently shares tips with buyers for cooking amaranth and other vegetables native to Africa. "People need to know how to cook African veg- etables," says Pompeo, a former refugee raising four children in her adopted homeland while her home country remains engulfed in civil war. From laborers to farm owners creating jobs, growing numbers of women are working in Maine's $1.8 billion agricultural sector, of which crop production accounts for $1.4 billion, according to figures provided to Mainebiz by Camoin Associates using Lightcast data. More female producers Nationwide, a 27% jump in the number of female agri- cultural producers between 2012 and 2017 outpaced the 7% increase in the number of total producers during that same period, according to the latest census by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In Maine, where the number of farms, farmland and average farm size overall dropped between 2012 and 2017, the proportion of female producers exceeds the national average. Around 44% of the state's 13,414 agricultural producers in 2017 were women, compared to 36% nationally and placing Maine among the top five states. New and beginning farmers also made up nearly a third of the total. e census is conducted every five years by the USDA, which is still collecting data for its 2022 tally of farms and ranches and the people who operate them; the next one may include Liberation Farms, which received a visit from a census worker the day Mainebiz was there. P H O T O / J I M N E U G E R F O C U S Habiba Salat and Maryan Mohamed are Somali Bantu farmers at Liberation Farms in Wales, a rural community about 10 miles northeast of Lewiston. If I take a paycheck, that's limited to me. But when I produce, that's affecting other people's lives and my family, too. — Habiba Salat Somali farmer in Wales Growing crop of women in agriculture makes waves in Maine B y R e n e e C o r d e s

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