Grounded Feminism: How Female Farmers Are Empowering Themselves by Connecting to Their Roots
In this day and age, the #bosswoman era has taken the world by storm. Women are rapidly becoming CEOs, high level executives and the breadwinners of the family, marrying their careers or multitasking a family and their job. The boss women era doesn’t only refer to high level corporate jobs however, and Sally Rizo and Rebekah Magers are perfect examples of that.
Sally Rizo and Rebekah Magers in OKRF’s greenhouse.
Both women embody the boss lady energy: constantly on the move, fierce, independent and not afraid to tell somebody to get out of the way. But instead of their schedules being full of meetings and conferences, or wardrobes full of suits and heels, their schedules are full of farmers markets, planting seeds, and community workshops, and their wardrobes full of stained overalls, rubber boots & faded sun hats.
Although these women share the same traits and energy as the typical boss woman, they focus their energy towards a very different world. Instead of making the classic six figure salary of a corporate power woman, they show the transformation of strong female figures in a non-capitalistic society; these women work not for money, but for joy.
Rather than rich in monetary wealth, they’re rich in nutritious food, community and love. They spend their days making the world a better place for all, while maintaining a fierce attitude that they won’t back down on their mission for anyone. Although they still need money to survive and thrive, especially in a place as expensive as Kaua‘i, they rely on their community for support while giving back to it, instead of feeding into exploitative systems that produce mass wealth.
Sally is a small business owner and farmer at Old Kōloa Regenerative Farm, working to regenerate the land on Kaua‘i and provide food to her community in a sustainable and small-scale cycle. She works in tandem with Rebekah, who co-founded Compost Kaua‘i, a startup focused on closing the food system and reducing waste through composting.
Sally began OKRF due to a passion of connecting low-income folks like herself to sustainable local food systems. When she moved to Kaua‘i eight years ago, she saw the island’s dependence on food imports despite the fact that it could be cut off from the outside world at any moment due to natural disasters (and after 2020, global pandemics).
Reliance on the mainland and a lack of access to affordable land, combined with the fact that the land here has been exhausted from the sugar industry, created a recipe for disaster where almost no food is grown on the island on a commercial level. This means there is much less food that regenerates the soil. From these observations, Sally realized the critical need for empowered, local and sustainable food systems that connected the earth and the community. After being pushed and supported financially and emotionally by her partner, Julian Marquez, she began to build the blueprint for a scalable regenerative farm that puts care for the earth and community above all.
Old Koloa Regenerative Farm’s Greenhouse,
Sally Rizo working in the field.
Rebekah co-founded Compost Kaua‘i three years ago, with her co-founders Nicolai Barca and Jesse Brown Clay. It began with a conversation about how difficult it was to compost on their own, but how something needed to be done about all of the food scraps being sent to the landfill.
“Food requires so many resources like land, water, fertilizer, gas, labor and most of the time plastic packaging. These are so many of the things we don’t have easy access to in Hawai‘i. At the same time, food waste is a resource because of the nutrients in them that were removed from the soil they grew in. I’m a problem solver, and I don’t know if I can change the world, but I knew I could help change my surroundings, and this was a problem in my surroundings where energy was exiting the food system on a remote island where we don’t have the luxury to lose energy and resources, so I wanted to help change it”, says Rebekah.
They began a trial with their friends, having each of them fill a bucket with their food scraps each week. After about 9 months, they began to have finished compost, or “black gold”, as they call it, which they are able to give back or sell to the community as fertilizer.
Sally and Rebekah work together as they both realize the importance of circular economies and tackling all sides of the food chain. They see that the bottom half of the food chain, dealing with waste, is just as important as the top half, growing food, and that if we want to create sustainable systems it begins with sustainable cycles where all energy is accounted for, taken care of, and returned to the cycle of life.
Since planting her first seeds a little over a year ago, Sally has been forced to break all of the stereotypes women face in order to be heard, “I have men coming to the farm all the time to help with technical things, like installing solar and refrigeration, and they see me at five foot tall and instantly don’t think they have to take me seriously. For a long time, I felt like I had to explain myself and my mission every time one of them came, I expected instant questioning. And now, the farm is beginning to be built up enough that they can see for themselves that this operation is serious”. As much as Sally despises the constant doubt she faces as a female farmer, she also acknowledges that these issues can be used to her advantage, “people underestimate women, and you can use that to get ahead by getting people to help you. When you’re working this hard, especially for a mission, you have to leverage every single resource you have, even those that seem like faults.”
Rebekah Magers at the compost facility.
At events where Compost Kaua‘i is commissioned to deal with waste, Rebekah has also found a lack of respect from men. “I feel like the default is for men to question you and what you’re doing, us as women have to bring a certain amount of intensity in order to be heard”. Rebekah mentions that females also make up the majority of Compost Kaua‘i’s customers. “Women seem to be the leaders, and also the followers, of the earth movement, they’re the ones coming up to us at farmer’s markets, excited to learn more.”
Sally incidentally has a team of entirely women coming together to work at OKRF, “There’s something special about women coming together to heal the earth… We’re building a care economy that women are the face of, and we knew we would face a lot of obstacles going in, doing work that makes the world a better place is harder than the work that doesn’t, but we’re not planning on letting that stop us”.” Sally also emphasizes the importance of community, “A care economy is all about caring for one another, caring for the land, caring for the people…We are nothing without the local community supporting us and without us supporting them and integrating them into the farm. This wouldn’t be possible without that constant give and take, that constant reciprocity”.” Rebekah adds that, “this work isn’t all about climate change, at its core, it’s about bringing community back to itself.”
Both women additionally mention the importance of having the support of their partners and co-workers. Although the boss woman stereotype typically displays women doing everything on their own, Sally and Rebekah exemplify how much a loving partner and/or community can help women reach their potential with support and empowerment. “That inner care economy of having loving, supporting partners allows us to have a ripple effect into the community and create a bigger care economy,” says Sally. “This business wouldn’t be possible without my co-founders and community. I compost because I care about it, but I also do it because I have a community that supports me in it. I couldn’t do it alone,” says Rebekah.
These women are a reminder of the power that women can bring to the mission of connecting humanity back with the earth, and that they’re not always going to do it in a gentle way. Sometimes, they’re going to be the loudest voice in the room, they’re going to fight for their mission above all else. It’s this tenacity that can inspire a new world, where women lead by listening to the earth, and people actually follow.
Photos courtesy of Willow Volkert