This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're welcoming in Jane Kaminski.
Kaminski, along with her husband, operates John-Paul's Farm in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, where they grow vegetables, small grains and hay, as well as raising laying hens.
Kaminski is also a Land Advocacy Fellow with the National Young Farmers Coalition.
While she had agricultural experiences growing up, a lack of land made it seem like farming was not a viable career path.
"It always seemed like more of a dream to me, and not something that I was able to really obtain," Kaminski said. "It wasn't really until I had a clear land access opportunity that I was able to dive in and start farming."
Kaminski's husband, John-Paul Runyan, co-owns their farmland with other members of the Runyan family, and Kaminski and Runyan operate the farm.
While Kaminski and her husband had their own struggles securing their access to the family land, she said she knows she comes from a place of privilege, having access at all.
"Land access has been a systemic issue for a long, long time," she said. "In an effort to improve access to land, policy is really what we need to help make those shifts."
A policy Kaminski is hoping to see in the upcoming Farm Bill is the The Land Access, Security and Opportunities Act, which is a bipartisan act that could help provide funding to help farmers and ranchers afford and acquire land.
Kaminski has traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the LASO act with the Young Farmers.
"It has made some progress, but there isn't a true, clear path for it making it into the Farm Bill," Kaminski said. "I do think that it would be a great time — especially as we're seeing some more movement on the Farm Bill — to really advocate for it if this is something that speaks to you."
While farming is a difficult job, Kaminski said it is also a rewarding one, and one that many young people do want to be involved in.
"I hear time and time again, especially from elders, that young people don't want to farm. Young people don't want to work hard. And I completely disagree with that," she said. "People do want to work. People just want to be able to make their way in the world. It's a really challenging thing to try and farm. If you don't have access to land or access to capital or access to markets to actually get going, that's a huge barrier."
For Kaminski herself, it took a little bit of time for her to recognize that she truly was a farmer and to feel like she was supposed to part of the agriculture community.
"There's a little bit of an elephant in the room, in that my farm's name — that I decided to name — is called John-Paul's Farm. That's my husband's male name," Kaminski said. "Being a woman in ag to me, I think has been about learning how capable I am and how much I truly belong in the field of farming."
