At a Glance
- Mary Jane Koechner named Women in Ag Lady Landowner of the Year.
- In the U.S., 36% of farmers are women; 19% are primary operators.
- Honesty, integrity and longevity are three key aspects of farm renters.
Mary Jane Koechner grew up on a farm with no running water or working electricity. It was a lifestyle that might have pushed even the strongest woman away from the agriculture industry, but in 86 years, she’s only spent one brief time living in the city. It was then she realized that no matter the obstacles, life was better on the farm.
As a young child, Koechner watched her mother and father slop hogs with buckets, work cattle in an open field and harvest crops with a threshing machine. “It was a hard way to farm,” Koechner recalls. “But they did it, and I learned a lot.”
Married right after graduating high school, her husband, Virgil, worked for Bell Telephone Co., and the couple moved to Kansas City, Mo. “I found out that was not the lifestyle for me,” Koechner says.
Koechner liked being in rural Missouri and working outdoors. In 1966, the couple purchased their first farm in Morgan County.
“There were a lot of trees and brush on it,” she recalls. “I went out on the tractor to pick up the brush the bulldozer cut down.” Little by little, she defied the norm for female farmers and instead transformed the farm into a row crop operation.
Today, Koechner is one of the roughly 53,000 women farm operators in the state of Missouri. Owning multiple farms across three counties, all of which operate on a cost-share basis with local farmers, earned her the title of Missouri Women in Agriculture Lady Landowner of the Year.
“Mary Jane is the 28th woman to receive this award,” says Nancy Kirby, retired Moniteau County Soil and Water District employee and Missouri Women in Agriculture committee member. “I’ve known her family all my life. They are a good bunch of people. Mary Jane is the hardest-working woman I’ve ever met.”
Kirby says the award is given to a female landowner who uses good management practices to sustain the land for the future of farming. Nominations are sent in by those who know the individual and reviewed by a selection committee.