Perspectives podcast: Leadership Series — Challenging the narrative around women in farming

Stephen Meurice: About an hour outside of Moosejaw is Mossbank, Saskatchewan. That's where Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel’s farm is.  

Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel: So, we are on the family farm.

SM: Right now, she's taking us to the top of one her many large grain bins.   
   
CJN: It’s a pretty incredible view, I’m not going to lie. Plus, it’s good cardio.

SM: From up here you can see the equipment shop as well as the house her husband grew up in. Their families have been farming in this area for more than 120 years.  

CJN: We farm about 16 thousand acres. We grow durum wheat, lentils and sometimes canola and we have a few acres of alfalfa where we do some baling as well.  

SM: When she’s not on the farm, Cherilyn’s a speaker and an advocate. She’s also a member of the Scotiabank Women Initiative. And in her advocacy work, one of her goals is to bridge the gap between farmers and non-farmers, to dispel some of myths or stereotypes about agriculture. And one stereotype she found especially prevalent early in her career –   

CJN: You know, used to anger me because a lot of times when I would do media interviews and they would want me to talk about women in agriculture, it was as though they were setting the story that I was struggling in a man's world, and I was like, ‘Am I missing something?’ Women have always been in agriculture. It's not a new story. It's not a phenomenon. 

SM: This episode, we bring you another instalment in our Leadership Series, where we hand the mic to leaders at Scotiabank to interview experts on an issue that resonates with them.  

And today you’ll hear a special conversation recorded in Cherilyn’s living room right here on her farm in Mossbank. Hosting the conversation is Janice Holzscherer. Janice is the Managing Director and Head of Agriculture at Scotiabank. They’ll not only address some misconceptions around the role of women in agriculture, but also a talk about the need for all modern farmers to get their stories out to the public.  
   
CJN: Communicating with the public has never been part of any job description even given to a farmer before me. I never asked my grandpa if he, you know, finished his blog about the frost in the Durham. [both laugh] Right?

SM: I’m Stephen Meurice, and this is Perspectives. 

Now, here’s Janice Holzscherer in conversation with Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel. 

Janice Holzscherer: Thank you very much, Cherilyn. Really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

CJN: I appreciate you taking the journey out here to the farm. It's lovely to have guests out on the farm.

JH: This is an absolutely gorgeous setup, but you've got more than just a normal farm here. So maybe you could just tell us a little bit about that.

CJN: Well, I don’t know if it’s different than a normal farm, but I'll take a crack at it. Welcome to the Nagel family Farm. Our corporate farm is called Hunter’s Paradise Farming and Outfitting. And there's some history there. Of course, we are hunters and avid nature lovers, but we did run a duck and geese hunting lodge for ten years and it kind of became the name of our farm operation. Both David and I grew up in the Mossbank area. We have really deep family roots here. But we went to school together, kindergarten through Grade 12. Both of our families have farmed here. We're both fourth generation farmers and yeah, having a great time farming here and raising two daughters. We get great opportunities to travel the world outside of the farm.

JH: You also do a lot of advocating and presenting in various places around the world. Can you talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you're doing?

CJN: Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of farmers that always wanted to be farmers when they grew up. I'm quite envious of that. I struggled immensely trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I think if there was one thing I knew for sure when I graduated high school in Mossbank, it was that I was not going to be a farmer. So, I went off to do really anything else I could find. I didn't think that there was a place for me here. So, I left and did a myriad of other things, got a lot of life experience and travel experience, which was always really important to me. And at some point in those adventures, I realized how good it was to live back home in Saskatchewan and in Canada. And David and I started dating in high school, and because he was always going to be a farmer, you know, he hung out here. 

JH: [laughs]

CJN: While I went out to do all of these other crazy things, and he stuck with me in all those really crazy wandering adventures. And I guess I always appreciated and disliked his stability. Agriculture brings with it, you know, stability as it relates to a family in and your life. I couldn't really understand that. And now I have come to certainly appreciate the roles that our family plays in the farm operation and the generations of families that have cooperated to bring us to where we are today. So, in my journey to come back to the farm, I found agricultural policy. And that was a place that just immediately took my attention. There's production agriculture, there's the science of growing crops, the agronomy of it, the operations piece of agriculture. And then I realized that there was this whole other world of policy, which from my observation, was government making decisions for farmers.

JH: Without necessarily really understanding, yeah.

CJN: The agriculture knowledge that the decision makers had, that the government had was very little. And I saw this as a potential problem. There were some really controversial issues at the time. The Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, that caught my attention immediately. I came from a family that was advocating for market choice, so I kind of grew up listening to that conversation, really not taking it in. [laughs] I was not going to be a farmer anyways. I just remember, you know, my dad yelling and these arguments reverberating around the walls of our house. That was policy to me growing up. But in hindsight I realize how passionate he was to make some changes in policy. So, for me that became part of my immediate network was policy junkies. You know, people who were willing to put their hand up and say, ‘I kind of like politics and I kind of like the intersection of politics and policy.’

JH: So, Cherilyn you mentioned the Wheat Board, so you're talking about the debate that was had that farmers wanted to have control about how they could sell their wheat and their barley.

CJN: Yes, exactly. We only had one single desk to sell it to. So, some wanted that. Some wanted the opportunity to market it.

JH: Right. So, what do you think is true about your perspective that you bring to this that might be different from some of the other people who get involved in policy? And do you think there's a perspective that you're able to bring coming specifically from a farm or also as a woman? Do you see anything about the way you think about how to get stuff done? 

CJN: You know at the onset of my career, I was very, very young and had absolutely no experience in agriculture policy. My very first role in ag policy was president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association. That isn't where you should start, [laughs] that isn't where I advocate that you start. But the organization at the time was, you know, going through some hardships and was looking at closing down the doors after 25 years or so of being an agricultural policy organization. And I saw this as an opportunity to get involved. And to the credit of that organization, they welcomed me as somebody very, very young and was the first female president and the youngest president that they'd ever had. And I had, you know, pretend confidence, you might say. I could show up at the board meeting, I could show up at a media scrum, I could show up at a debate and argue the position. I was very prepared for all of those arguments. I was never prepared for the conversation about women in agriculture. I was prepared for the policy issue at hand. I could study that. I really couldn't study a perspective. I also recognized that I was so fortunate to have really strong women around me, so it wasn't overly noticeable to me that women were not playing leadership roles. There were great women around me in the agriculture policy, but also in my life. You know, my mom and my dad were a team on the farm. That was evident to me. She played a very traditional role for women on the farm, but it wasn't seen in a negative capacity, or at least I never viewed it in a negative capacity. Same with my grandma, and they were both strong women. So, I grew up with strong women all around me. My sister was always really interested in agriculture, operating equipment, you know, out there doing the mechanics in the shop. So, my issue was intimidation. I felt intimidated.

JH: Intimidated because you were young or intimidated because you thought you didn't have the…

CJN: Intimidated because I didn't have any experience. Good grief. I should have felt intimidated. You should feel intimidated if you were going into a leadership role with no experience. Yep, that's exactly how you should feel. And so, my advice, or at least my comment when people would ask me about that was just know your stuff. You know, if you want to get over intimidation, increase your knowledge base, increase your networking, find people that are going to help you grow over that intimidation factor.

JH: You know, it's interesting that you say that, because one of the things that I found in my career is that women can bring a different perspective. And if people understand that the goal of leadership or getting things done on a group is having a number of people who have different perspectives, that can be something that's important. And I think that one of the things that is a little bit of a challenge is sometimes convincing people that it's better to get a broader range of perspectives, right? We all live in our little echo chambers and we hear the same thing. So, do you find it on a lot of the policy committees or what have you, that your different viewpoint is appreciated? Or do you just find a lot of, ‘No, this is the way things get done.’ And, ‘No, we're not going to change?’

CJN: I find the agriculture industry, honestly to be very open minded about those perspectives. We have things we argue about. No two farm operations are the same. And no two farmers are the same. So I like to think that I bring perspective based on my own unique life experiences and part of my life experience is being a woman. So that's great. That's a part of my perspective that I can bring. But I think our industry has done a fairly good job in the last, at least the last decade of diversifying in whatever way that looks like. And sometimes that's bringing young people in. Agriculture was always, for me, viewed as this very old industry. And so, bringing young people in, because listen, at the Wheat Grower Board we had a young board, not just me, there was a lot of us that were new and young. And those young men that I worked with everyday suffered from the same intimidation that I did. A lot of those young men, when they're taking over family operations, and the truth is more young men in the history of agriculture have taken over their family farms than women, they also have felt all kinds of inadequacy. You know, it used to anger me because a lot of times when I would do media interviews and they would want me to talk about women in agriculture, it was as though they were setting the story that I was struggling in a man's world. And I was like, ‘Am I missing something?’ And I would sit oftentimes thinking, ‘Am I so naive that I'm not recognizing what's happening around me?’ But I really felt respected and supported in my journey through agriculture. And I credit that to a lot of both men and women in my life that have just supported me in every step of the way. By presenting me as the poster child for women in agriculture and taking on non-traditional roles like an operator, ‘Oh you operate equipment? Let's talk about that.’ You know or, ‘Oh you're going be in ag policy? Let's talk about that.’ A couple things happened. It made it more difficult for me to accept some of the traditional roles of women on the farm that at times in my life I needed to take. So, before I had children, I was very actively involved in agriculture policy and felt my career, you know, was really moving ahead. And then I have children, so now I'm at home in a very busy harvest season. I need to be supportive of the team that is my farm. So, if the best way for me to do that while I'm at home with the kids is to make the meals for my crew –  

JH: That’s what you do.

CJN: I want to feel good doing that. But there was always this negative connotation that, ‘Well, you used to operate equipment.’ Now there's a hierarchy that felt like it wasn't coming from me or my farm operation. It was coming from outside.

JH: Like there's a value thing that's being put on? Yes.

CJN: Yeah. That there is this hierarchy and that I was always kind of trying to fight against because I didn't feel it, I didn't see it, and yet I was always being asked about it. And for me, when somebody asks me to speak about being a woman in agriculture, I feel like it feels more condescending because that's a topic I never spent a ton of time understanding or researching. Women have always been in agriculture. It's not a new story. It's not a phenomenon. We do more in certain operations than others. And I would also state that the percentage of women as sole operators on the farm is still – 

JH: Pretty small.

CJN: Pretty small. So, we have to acknowledge that that's just a truth and there's various reasons for that. But the number of women coming into the agriculture industry in other capacities is awesome. In every way, shape or form, whether that's in agriculture transportation or in agricultural sciences. Whether it's an agricultural policy, there's women coming in every direction into the industry. And I'm grateful because there was a time way before me where that level of respect may not be the same. There was no road, and then we moved to a dirt road. That was a little bit easier, but there was a road for women. Then it became a gravel road, then it became a paved road. And right now, every job you want to have in the agriculture industry as a woman is available to you. The women in agriculture struggles is still a conversation that's happening kind of outside of my areas of interest, but it is happening. So, I don't want to downplay it. If there's still issues that are happening, they just never seem to present themselves to me in my day to day. Do you find the same or?

JH: Well, you know, one of the things that I have learned from my daughter is that there are other women who are having a very different experience. And the fact that that wasn't my experience, I need to think about the fact that that could potentially be a very real experience that someone else is having. And I may just not have had the sort of personality that notices it or what have you. But, you know, I think it's really interesting what you bring up, because I think there's two ways to look at it. On the one hand, I agree with you, it is somewhat demeaning to say, ‘You must have had all these struggles as a woman trying to get ahead. You know, life must have just been brutal for you.’ Whereas on the other hand, if we put down what someone else’s, that really struggled, if we put down what their experience is then we’re almost saying to them, ’That's not legit.’ You know, ‘You shouldn't have felt that way.’ So, it's very important sometimes to just look at somebody and say, ‘That hasn't been my experience, but that doesn't take away.’ Like what you were saying, ‘That doesn't take away from that being your experience. And here's maybe some ways that we can help.’ I would say that one of the things that you commented on that really registered with me, which I like to think is changing, is this whole phenomena of going into a situation where you're the only woman. So, you don't necessarily have someone that you're going to be able to connect with necessarily right out of the gate. To your point with the children, right? You know, like I'm the one that got the call at 3:00 in the afternoon that Derek fell off his bike or something like that, and you got to run. So, I think that having more female role models in these situations can make it easier.

CJN: Yeah, when you use the word ‘personality,’ that really resonated for me because when I reflect on my experience over 20 years in the industry, having not had those great big stories of, you know, struggling with men in the industry, I do attribute that to my personality and probably a whole lot of naivete. [laughs] You know, maybe I didn't even realize it was happening at the time. And for that, maybe I'm grateful because it allowed me to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep on going. And it's built character for me. It's not that there hasn't been negative experiences all along the way. Good grief, a ton of them. But that helps you build strength, build character, build an understanding that we don't always agree. I'm perfectly comfortable in a situation that is confrontational, that's just who my personality is. What felt terrible for me was I was there to talk about the issue at hand. What is the policy issue? 

JH: Right. And people wanted to talk about you're a woman. 

CJN: Yeah. There was one story in particular where I had a TV crew coming out to this farm, to this very kitchen to sit at that very table. And I was preparing for the issue that we were working on. And I was overly prepared, as I always am, to talk about the details of this issue. And when we sat down to do the interview, the journalist, the first question that they asked me was, “What makes you different than a male farmer?” And I was really struck by that. [laughs] I was ill-prepared for that line of questioning. And sometimes I am just as surprised as everybody else by what comes out of my mouth. [laughs] I did not have a good answer for that. And I jokingly said, “Well, I guess I look better in pink.” And we carried on with the rest of the discussion and we got around to the policy issues. But of course, you know, that pretty pink soundbite, that became what the story was about. You know, women in agriculture. And so, I've reflected on that a lot. And there was some subtle things that I didn't realize I was doing through the course of my career. One of them, as crazy as it might sound, is I didn't wear pink. I never wore it. Actually, this is so funny. This bracelet I am wearing today, if you notice, has this one pink band in it. My mother gave me this bracelet based solely on that story and some of those experiences because I believed, and my mom taught me, that to portray yourself appropriately, always appropriately. And I felt that showing up at a meeting, wearing a skirt or wearing pink, something overtly feminine. I wouldn't be taken seriously. And it was just a passing thought that I carried through my whole career. And to this day, Janice, I will admit, when I'm in a business meeting and other women are there and they are dressed overtly feminine, those old perspectives come back to me and I think, ‘I would have advised her against that.’ And it's still in my brain. So, the irony is that it wasn't men putting that thought into my head, it was me coming to that decision that how you look will determine how much respect you might have or how seriously somebody might take you. So, it was always intentional to me to dress [laughs] more on the masculine side of the line than on the feminine side of the line. Again, a bit of a personality thing for me, regardless. But it's been an interesting observation for me to go through.

JH: Yeah, no, I think it is. I think that, you know what I'm really struck by is that I think that we just need to understand that we need people who have different experiences, whether they're from a rural setting or an urban setting or they're immigrants. The idea that we are going to make better decisions if we listen to people who have a broader perspective. And I think it's a great call out that we shouldn't just be focused on the fact that, ‘Well, you're a woman, so by definition you're going to have a different perspective.’ You might have a different perspective or you might not, depending on what your background is in. I am struck sometimes by how difficult it can be to get people to recognize that we're better off if we listen to people who have broader perspectives and that we just spend so much time in groups, in leadership teams, in policy meetings with everybody who kind of has the same sort of way of looking at things. And so, I sort of look at women in agriculture, or women succeeding in markets as a way to at least try to get some people who might have a different perspective. But I think it's a great point you raise that that's kind of a shallow way of looking at it.

CJN: It is. And so, when people talk about how do we gain more perspective, they often focus on gender and how people look. But, look at 20 years later, I'm not the youngest person at the table anymore, and I'm no longer the only woman. I'm often the only farmer. So, the majority of my speaking audiences used to be my own farming colleagues inside the industry, and I pivoted away from that to really focusing my time and energy, talking to an audience that is non farming. So, my urban cousins.

JH: [laughs]

CJN: My urban cousins, I enjoy telling them about these great stories on the farm. And that's where I realized that the rural perspective –  

JH: Is really missing.

CJN: The farming perspective was missing. So, I kind of found another way to add perspective that was not obvious. I think that really and truly when I think about why I didn't want to talk about being a woman in agriculture, it's because I thought it was the most obvious thing about me. But now it's not obvious that I'm a farmer. I don't fit the stereotypical, if you ask the general public to close their eyes and picture a farmer, they're not picturing me. They picture, you know, an old man. With probably a white beard.

JH: With a pitchfork. 

CJN: Pitchfork, coveralls. You know that classic Old McDonald.  So, I find it just fun to be that new perspective that is agriculture, that is rural, that is a farmer, and yes, it is a female farmer. It's just a really cool place for me to be right now. And I enjoy sitting on boards that are, at first glance, not connected to the agriculture industry. That always I can find a connection to the agriculture industry and I'm able to bring that perspective to the table. So, speaking to audiences about farming, about agriculture, about all of these cool topics, that's been just super refreshing for me.

JH: You know, it's fascinating. One of the things that we've found, Scotiabank's been doing a lot of work on putting together a sustainability program and trying to figure out how we can help farmers get their story out. And one of the things that kept coming up was the fact that the perspective of what farmers are actually doing and what people who live away from a farm, how they actually think things go and there's this massive disconnect. So, do you feel that you get listened to? And what do you think it is about the way you present yourself that makes people be willing to listen to you and not just think, ‘You know, she hasn't a clue.’ Or whatever.

CJN: Oh yes, from the most recent experiences, I definitely think they're willing to listen. What we have going for us in the industry is the general public trusts farmers. They don't know who a farmer is, but they want to believe that they trust farmers. So, what I've been working really hard at is to try in my presentations to be approachable versus defensive. And that's been a journey for me because in agriculture policy I was waving the defensive flag. I was angry and that decisions were being made… 

JH: ‘You have to stop doing that to us.’  

CJN: Yes, I was in defense, yes. But as it relates to the consumer, that same approach did not work for us. Being defensive didn't work. Let me give an example. The all-capital letter response on Facebook, because I was mad about what somebody was saying about agriculture did not work for me.

JH: No, that wouldn't go well. [laughs]

CJN: It didn't go well. So, I was trying to carry that defensive approach that, ‘Let me tell you that it's none of your business what the chemicals are that I'm using on my farm.’ That approach did not work. And it's been helpful for me to realize that I was under the impression that because my family has been farming this land for generations, that it is my right to make the decisions that I feel necessary every day. To now realizing that those decisions, they are a privilege. And with that privilege means I have to build trust with the people who are generous enough to give us those privileges, which is our general public. We can reduce the fear.

JH: And it takes away a lot of the misconceptions.

CJN: Yes. There's so many myths as it relates to agriculture. So, we have to counter those by showing up. And when you try to think about whose fault is it that we're in this situation, to me it's a matter of timing. Because the onset of, you know, the World Wide Web, the world of information happened at the same time as some of the biggest advances in agriculture. I would argue that agriculture is one of the most scientifically advanced industries on the globe. That's not how our public remembers us. In our defense, communicating with the public has never been part of any job description ever given to a farmer before me. There's been no post-secondary education curriculum that includes media relations, that includes how to tell people about your farm operation, how to communicate about… 

JH: Social media.  

CJN: Yeah, you know I never asked my grandpa if he, you know, finished his blog about the frost in the Durham. [laughs] Right?

JH: [laughs] 

CJN: Not one generation before I ever had to talk to the public about what we do. And then we just got out of the tractor one day and realized the public is scared of agriculture. And meanwhile we have all this brand-new technology. You know, we just went 0 to 60 advancing the industry that is agriculture. And all of those advancements made us more sustainable, made us more environmentally friendly. But we didn't tell anybody about them. We never gave them perspective. I would definitely say that the industry is doing much better at acknowledging that we need to feel obligated to continue this conversation and that we could use a little bit of training to do it. And there's so many organizations out there that are doing that that I have the fortune to be a part of. I love to talk about agriculture and the good news stories about growing food in Canada, the sustainability measures we have in Canada, just a ton of great things coming off the farm.

JH: Just want to ask you one final question. You've done a lot of amazing stuff. What's the thing that you're most proud of?

CJN: Oh come on.

JH: C’mon – you have to pick one and you can’t say your children.

CJN: Boy, most proud of? I think I might be most proud of accepting that this is where I am right now, because that girl who graduated high school from small town Saskatchewan wasn't proud. I really felt, as ridiculous as this sounds, I felt like I was at a disadvantage growing up in small town Saskatchewan. And you will not find someone more proud to be farming, to be living in Saskatchewan than me. So, I think that has thus far been what I’m the most proud of, is believing that I could change that much, that I could find a place for me in agriculture, be successful at it and thoroughly enjoy it. Nobody's having more fun than me.

JH: Cherilyn, thank you very much. I've really enjoyed this and I appreciate you giving us the opportunity to come out and chat.

CJN: Well, I thank you and the team for making the trek. 

JH: Anytime.

SM: You’ve been listening to Janice Holzscherer, the Managing Director and Head of Agriculture at Scotiabank. She was in conversation with Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel, speaker and advocate as well as owner and operator at Hunters Paradise Farming and Outfitting.