Hoffelmeyer is an Assistant Professor of Public Engagement in Agriculture. She conducts dairy-related research on topics such as robotics, labor, market concentration, and alternative farm models. She earned her Ph.D. at Penn State University in Rural Sociology with a dual-title in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Hoffelmeyer uses semi-structured interviews, surveys, and ethnographic immersion to understand farmers’ and laborers’ everyday experiences in agrifood production. Then applies feminist, queer, and labor theories to learn from these daily practices to inform agricultural programming and policy on how to make shifts to support viability, well-being, and sustainability.
Graduate Student: Trish Fisher (pictured) is a PhD student in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at UW–Madison. She holds a Master of Public Policy and a Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, and a BA from UCLA.
Labor shortages, tightening profit margins, and aging farm populations motivate farmers, practitioners, and policymakers to identify new labor streams and increase long-term farm viability.To explore the future of agricultural labor as related to farm viability, I propose two projects. The first project investigates if and how childcare, as a form of carework, is viewed as part of agricultural labor. Children are viewed as an opportunity to renew future generations’ interest in farming and, eventually, an essential source of labor for family farms. However, when separated as a household issue rather than a farm issue, the need for appropriate childcare can undermine farmer households’ ability to operate viable farms and invest in potential future farmers.
This is part of a larger project entitled “Linking Childcare to Farm Children Safety,” funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The overarching goal of this larger project is to (1) understand what farm parents do with their children while they work on the farm and (2) how different strategies farm parents use may affect both their ability to be productive in agriculture and the safety of their children. This project included focus groups with women farmers, a survey of farm households, a photovoice project (Becot, Inwood, and Buchanan 2023), and a systematic review of farm programming documents (Becot et al. 2022). This particular portion of the project analyzes 36 interviews with key informants related to farm safety and business.
The broad purpose of these key informant interviews is to do the following: (1) Develop a broad understanding of the environment in which farm parents make decisions about childcare and farm work and (2) Understand the types of resources farm parents have access to related to childcare. This project’s analysis focuses on assessing how farm service providers and farm organizations understand carework to overlap with or depart from farm work.