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In nations where colonialism persists such as Australia, scholars have identified the hegemony of a morally infused white farming imaginary. While this construction has traditionally been invested in heteropatriarchal ideologies our aim in this paper is to demonstrate how, in recent years, white middle-class farming women have been woven into this narrative through settler colonial logics. We take up this contention in the Australian context examining 100 posts to two major institutional Instagram accounts that feature farming women: @invisfarmer and @agrifuturesau. Using the lens of settler colonialism, and a visual and textual analysis, we identify how the "white middle-class woman farmer" is framed by discourses of white feminism and invisibility/visibility. We reveal the emergence of a narrow farming woman aesthetic which is bolstered by narratives which celebrate the "successful female farmer" and the "successful female farm leader". In concluding the paper, we discuss the implications of the gendering of the white farming imaginary, and make a call for gender and rural studies scholars to de-centre and disaggregate the "white middle-class settler farming woman" subject position, through attending to settler colonialism and Indigenous scholarship in understandings of Australian rurality. • Australian rural studies uphold the "white middle-class settler farming woman". • The gendering of the white farming imaginary occurs through settler colonialism. • The "white middle-class woman farmer" is framed by discourses of white feminism. • Narratives of the "successful female farmer" and "leader" are celebrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eka Nari Sanghathan (ENS), an Indigenous single women farmer's collective in Odisha, India and Norco Dairy in regional NSW, Australia are cooperatives undertaking collective action to 'survive well', securing agrarian livelihoods in the face of climate change. Striking differences in affluence and poverty separate these place‐based cooperatives while other things connect them: an Earth unsettled by climate change and extractivist/capitalist interventions. Both cooperatives transform place in practice by engaging similar survival strategies and non‐exploitative forms of cooperation. In this paper we seek to articulate the transformative nature of these places and practices in a way that goes beyond easy binaries of local/global, while enabling recognition of different affiliations between lands, related climate crisis and sustainable and shared surviving mechanisms. We develop a 'two‐thirds' perspective building upon Bruno Latour's third attractor, the Terrestrial, together with another third, Chakrabarti, Dhar and Cullenberg's idea of the World of the Third (WOT). Their interventions open our thinking to the ecological particularities, uncertainties, and postcapitalist possibilities of surviving well in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines how female agricultural producers are responding to the cost-price squeeze of Australian agriculture. Thirty-six in-depth interviews were conducted with female producers in a variety of sectors from across Australia. In order to maintain viability female producers are seeking alternative methods of production and marketing, rather than pursing economies of scale. Female producers are seeking alternatives to hegemonic agriculture due to its gendered financial and social constraints. This involves the sustainable production of niche products on smaller plots of land and direct marketing to capture more of the economic value of their products and to reduce risk. This research highlights ways in which producers can stay on farm and contribute to the creation of alternate food systems. It represents an alternative to the competitive productivist agricultural approach of "get big or get out" and improves the visibility of women farmers and a shift in the masculinist construction of farming. These alternative production and marketing methods have the potential to benefit Australian agriculture, rural communities, to create more equal gender regimes and to improve environmental sustainability. • Female producers are responding to the cost-price squeeze of Australian agriculture by turning to the production of niche, sustainable produce. • This produce is marketed directly or through short supply chains. • Sustainable agriculture provides female producers with greater access to resources and acceptance. • Values driven production and emerging consumer activism is driving the creation of an alternate food system in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia and other OECD countries women who are recovering from depression in rural areas find that access to professional care is fraught with difficulties. Despite the emphasis on the social determinants shaping mental ill health and recovery, Australian rural support has been largely defined by biomedical and psy-expertise focused on correcting biochemistry and cognition through different models of formal medical care. Addressing the limitations of individualised biomedical models, this article offers a relational understanding of how recovery from depression is produced through rural and gendered emplacement (Pink, 2011). Theorising recovery through the notion of emplacement shifts attention from an individualised notion of embodied distress (symptoms, emotions, cognition) towards a social understanding of the dynamics of human and non-human relations that are afforded by different care practices (from medical treatment to social support). To date there has been little critical analysis of how women's distress and recovery experiences are gendered in relation to both formal and informal care in rural places. Extending the insights of geographers, social anthropologists and feminist scholars we analyse the recovery stories of women living in rural and regional Australia. We focus specifically on how rural women experienced uncertainty and stigma that emerged through formal care spaces and impeded their recovery -the gendered dynamics of em(dis)placement were identified. In contrast, we identify how particular informal care spaces enabled women's recovery through multiple relations with human and non-human others. Our research aims to contribute a critical understanding of how everyday professional care and self-care practices are intertwined with the complex gendered negotiations of emplacement and displacement that shape rural mental (ill) health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at 20th-century working-class farmer Grace Muriel Tucker and her letters to the rural Australian periodical "The Weekly Times". The letters describe her efforts to shape a small poultry farm with domestic gardens out of an uncleared bush landscape in Gippsland, Australia. Particular focus is given to Tucker's use of her farm to escape urban poverty and to her relationship to the Australian bush. Details related to her cultivation of vegetables, flowers, and poultry are presented. Other topics include bushfires, black sand, and wildfires.

In the past decade a growing body of work situated at the intersection of masculinity and agriculture has emerged in the literature of rural sociology and human geography. A number of these studies have examined masculinity through discursive analytical frameworks which focus on the symbolic, cultural and embodied representations of what it is to be masculine in agriculture. It is with the latter that this paper is concerned. Here gender is located in a social constructionist framework and understood as something that is produced as a set of cultural practices which constitute men's and women's bodies in different ways. Two focus group discussions were conducted with ten young male dairy farmers in northern Victoria. A comparative analysis of the data suggests that perceptions from the masculine perspective of the non-farm work of women could be changing away from a traditional emphasis of a supportive and administrative role toward one where women's roles are acknowledged more as managerial in terms of the financial management of dairy farms. What also emerges from the young farmers' discourses is a degree of doubt and uncertainty about themselves and their own identities as managers. It would appear that they are far more confident in their roles as hands on farmers doing the outdoor physical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper is based on an ongoing study that looks at farm management practices by Australian women cotton growers using farm management software, most particularly an agricultural decision support system, CottonLOGIC. The study is informed through a theoretical framework of structuration theory as a metatheory for probing the recursiveness of farm management and technology usage, and diffusion of innovations theory as a lower-level theory for analysing software adoption characteristics. Empirical research indicates that effective information exchange flows from homophilous communication. In this paper, the principles of homophily and heterophily in communication networks were initially drawn from diffusion theory. The findings suggest that despite apparent gender disparities, the presence of empathy and shared goals between farming partners overrides 'gender heterophily' to become gender homophily. Therefore cotton growers are informed of scientific research through homophilous communication, influencing the construction and reconstruction of innovative software usage and existing farm management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various aspects of suicide by farmers worldwide. Various factors like the volatility of the commodity market, variability of the seasons and the government regulations lead to stressful situation for farmers. Further, various details like the age of the farmers, the methods of committing suicide and the legislation passed to safeguard the farmers in countries like India, Sri Lanka and Australia are discussed. Also the rise in suicide rate by female farmers is mentioned.