Growing New Women Farmers in the Midwest
When: February 15th, 12:00pm.
Where: Younes Conference Center, Kearney, Nebraska.
Leigh Adcock has been executive director
of Women, Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN) since 2008. Prior to that, she
was a board member for the organization for 2 years, and served from 2003 –
2008 as executive director of the Iowa Farmers Union. In her current role with
WFAN, Ms. Adcock is responsible for all communications and development
activities, as well as writing and administering grants. She supervises a staff
of one fulltime program coordinator, a part-time office manager, and a variety
of consultants and contractors. WFAN was founded in 1997 to serve as a regional
network for women involved in all aspects of healthy food and farming. The
organization was founded in Iowa and currently has 2,000 members nationwide.
While the network is national, most programming work occurs in the upper
Midwest, and focuses on providing networking, information and leadership
development opportunities to women farmers, landowners, and food systems
advocates. Ms. Adcock has been instrumental in expanding WFAN’s scope to a
national level, increasing membership more than six-fold, increasing funding
from under $30,000 to $250,000 per year, and creating successful programs such
as Women Caring for the Land conservation program for women farmland owners,
and Harvesting Our PotentialSM, the on-farm apprenticeship program which this
grant proposal seeks to expand. She is also co-creator of the Plate to Politics
project, a collaboration of WFAN, Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education
Service (MOSES) and The White House Project, designed to recruit and train more
rural and farm women all over the US to run for public office at all levels,
from the community to the White House.
Ms. Adcock holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in
communications/radio and television, with a minor in journalism, from the
University of Northern Iowa (1982). She has completed graduate coursework in
public policy, also at UNI (1990). Ms. Adcock’s professional experience has
included work in television, radio, magazines, newspapers and public relations.
She has done volunteer and paid work for environmental, social justice, and
sustainable agriculture organizations throughout her career, including the
Sierra Club, PeaceLinks, Iowa Waste Reduction Center, Practical Farmers of
Iowa, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and others. She served three years
on the board of the Iowa Environmental Council. Ms. Adcock grew up on a
360-acre conventional grain and beef cattle farm in northwest Iowa, which she
currently co-owns with her mother. She and her husband have two sons and live
on an acreage north of Ames, IA.
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