Third annual AgricultHER school focuses on empowering women in Ag

Published 3:11 pm Tuesday, June 16, 2026

This year marks the third annual Peace Region AgricultHER School, an event aimed at empowering women in agriculture through a hands-on learning and networking event.

Alaina Archibald with PCBFA, started the Northern Women in Ag Conference, which is a women’s-focused agricultural conference that takes place over two days in Fairview in February,

“It sells out every year and some of the other surrounding municipalities and staff approached me asking to partner with them on another version of it where we can do it in the summer so that we can have a field tour and some hands-on components to it,” she said.

She added that the event has now grown and evolved to have a few different municipalities and counties that are involved in the organizing of it, as well as Cows and Fish.

The women-only event in the summer will take place on June 27, rotating it throughout the Peace Region as well. This year it will take place in Woking, Alta. in the Saddle Hills County.

Archibald said something different this year is that they have a theme: Balancing Land, Life, Learning and Legacy.

“We start with a farm tour, and then we go to a nearby hall, and we have several presentations and door prizes, and we do lunch and supper for the girls that come.

“As a woman in agriculture myself, it can be a little bit intimidating, and a lot of the women that I’ve connected with through my work at PCBFA, I’ve heard similar stories, so I brought the Northern Women in Ag Conference to life.”

She said there is a similar one in Calgary, but she wanted to bring one to the north so that people don’t have to drive eight-plus hours to get there.

“I wanted to bring something to the north, that kind of paid homage to the women that are just as involved in the farms as their counterparts, and it’s nice that we can have two now.”

When it comes to the issues facing women in agriculture, Archibald said it’s still a somewhat male-dominated field.

“I think women just struggle to be bold sometimes and take the plunge and take the risk,” she said, adding that men are more willing to put themselves out there.

“It’s also just really hard to get into farming in general. It’s not a cheap industry, and it can be difficult to find financing and things like that, but I think the biggest thing is that we’re helping take the stigma out of it by promoting women in agriculture,” said Archibald.

Each year they try and have a producer panel, which covers a bunch of different bases, and try to get someone from more of a cropping background, someone who is from a livestock background and then someone from another different background.

“We always try to factor in soil health and riparian management, just because that’s a very common thing that people in the Peace Region have to deal with. We have lots of water bodies and things like that in the area, so we help give these women tools on how they can manage their farm around those wetlands without doing damage to them in the ecosystem.”

They also try and have a balance of information and inspiration at the women-led events.

“So, we may have a speaker who’s just there to share their story about how they got involved in agriculture and all of the sort of hardships that they’ve faced along the way, whereas on the counter part of that, we may have a vet come in and do a very specific veterinary presentation.”

They will also sometimes have somebody from FCC to talk about finances, so they try and cover all of their bases when it comes to different topics to discuss.