Ashley Bruner and daughter Rayna work on sorting out beef orders at the family operation Dakota Angus near Drake. Provided.
BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota News Cooperative) – While a little over a century ago women obtained the right to vote in North Dakota, it took decades more to be treated as equals at traditionally male occupations like agriculture.
Today, around one-third of agriculture operations in the US are operated by women. Opportunities to lead agribusinesses and farming operations continue to grow, particularly as Baby Boomer farmers retire or pass away.
More than half of graduates of agricultural science programs are now women, a shift starting over a decade ago. At many programs now, more than 60% of graduates are female.
Jill Vigesaa, 65, raised on a farm near Lakota, and recent winner of the first ever Legacy of the Land Award created by the North Dakota Farm Bureau Foundation, has seen those changes.
When growing up, it was traditionally her brothers who would drive the tractors.
That changed after they grew bored of the monotonous back-and-forth and paid her a bit out of their hourly wage if she would ride along to keep them company.
“Well, pretty soon it was like, ‘You can drive it, why are you just sitting here?’” she said.
That began her own farming journey, even if her father was a little embarrassed because of neighbors gawking.
“They would literally sit at the end of the field and watch me, and not watch any of the guys,” Vigesaa said of neighboring farmers. “They weren’t unkind, but it was like women aren’t supposed to be out here doing this kind of stuff.”
That’s changed dramatically, and interest and opportunity abound in North Dakota and across the Midwest.
The United Nations declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer as well as the Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, highlighting how integral women are to both agricultural operations and as land stewards.
For Trish Feiring, who ranches with her husband Donnie just north of Beach near the Montana border, it took years to buy land rather than lease it.
The partners now run a successful Angus ranch on nearly 2,000 acres, raising cattle, selling grass-fed-and-finished beef across the Western part of the state and operating a vacation rental on the property.
Feiring said there are many opportunities for young people to get into agriculture, particularly if they’re creative and flexible with what presents itself.
“I hate to say this, but you can’t just be a rancher,” Feiring said. “You have to be a business person, and you have to be willing to open your mind to different opportunities.”
While growing up on a farm where her own mother took a very active role, and seeing her own operation as a 50/50 partnership with her husband, she did say she felt women are becoming more well received in ranching.
“Independent women who want to start their own operations, there’s more of them all the time, so kudos to them,” Feiring said.
Ashley Bruner, manager of Dakota Angus near Drake, said one of the reasons she and her husband Travis started the company was to potentially provide a future career pathway to some of their four children, three of whom are girls.
“We know that for all four to come back to the farm is not realistic in today’s world,” said Bruner, who sees her oldest daughter has the most interest in potentially working in the operation long-term.
“She loves being outside, being with the animals, she likes learning alongside her dad,” Bruner said.
Active on the board of the North Dakota Angus Association, Bruner said she has seen more women taking on leading roles in operations during the past several years and is amazed at the work they do.
“There are some women who are the main breeders in their operation, it’s not their husband,” Bruner said. “I’m just in awe and think it is so great that they’re the ones who came back to the ranch to take over from the previous generation and continue building that legacy for their future.”
Many of the recent interns coming through the association internship program have been young women, she said.
“They’re not afraid to do the work that’s out there, they’re not afraid to learn, they want to be involved,” Bruner said. “Thirty, forty years ago, that wasn’t a woman’s job.”
Amber Smith, co-executive director for the nonprofit Women in Ranching, who ranches in Eastern Montana, helped form the organization as part of an effort to provide skill-building programs and resources to new women ranchers, who make up about 60% of those they serve.
The organization came out of having been in other meetings with women farmers and ranchers 19 to 70 years old who were forward-facing or leading agricultural operations, but were voicing limiting beliefs about their own value.
“What women continue to articulate is we want more hands-on skill building, we want more opportunities to learn from one another, we want more opportunities to gather, we want more women ranching to be much bigger,” Smith said.
New ranchers are faced with difficulties breaking in and finding it harder to get land of their own due to high land prices and large tracts being held by the very wealthy, but opportunities are there for leasing or working a ranch to gain valuable experience, Smith said.
And women appear most interested, she said, so it makes sense to serve that clientele.
“I’m hearing from colleges, universities and nonprofits and ranches that host internship programs and they’re now trying to diversify their programs to include male students, because most of their applicants are women,” Smith said.
Maggie Keith, a former PBS host who returned to Kentucky 20 years ago to start a regenerative beef operation, Foxhollow Farm, after concerns about how meat was being raised, said she had a “big learning curve” from not growing up farming day to day.
“The culture of agriculture is what really inspired me and I believe that’s why women are so drawn to the regenerative movement,” Keith said, adding she wished organizations like Women in Ranching existed when she started.
“It definitely was a lot of hands-on learning early on,” Keith said. “I remember going to my first cattlemen’s association meetings and not looking like anyone there and really feeling like an outsider.”
Remarks that came her way saying she wouldn’t last, that she was a rich kid playing this game, that she’d just have a freezer full of ground beef, didn’t wear her down.
“That really motivated me, it didn’t discourage me,” Keith said. “It made me seek out more generational farmers to talk to and really made me committed to building this model and to share this model and prove that a regenerative process actually could work.”
The North Dakota News Cooperative is a local, nonprofit news organization providing reliable and independent reporting on issues and events that impact the lives of North Dakotans. The organization increases the public’s access to quality journalism and advances news literacy across the state.
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