March 28th, 2022
By Michael Shulman
Nicole Gwishiri Joins AFT as Women for the Land Southeast Program Manager
(Washington, D.C.) Nicole Gwishiri joins American Farmland Trust today as Women for the Land Southeast Program Manager, where she will help advance AFT’s programs, support extension and outreach, technical assistance and plan, evaluate and track impacts of regional women-led learning circles in North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia.
“Nicole brings a wealth of experience working in agriculture and food systems in the Southeast. Her extension experience has connected her to the lives and priorities of rural communities in KY and will inform our outreach with historically underserved producers across the Southeast. I am so excited to have her on the team to help direct our strategy and facilitate outreach in the region,” said Gabrielle Roesch-McNally, AFT’s Women for the Land Director.
AFT’s Women for the Land Initiative strives to reduce gender-related barriers to conservation implementation on farmland and ranchland by helping to close information gaps and connect women to a network of technical services advisors, mentors and other women working to implement conservation on their land. Women for the Land Learning Circles, women-led peer to peer learning model, have brought together over 2,080 women agricultural producers and landowners in over 16 states linking them to resources, information and peer networks to help enhance farm viability and improve land conservation. AFT’s Women for the Land program in the Southeast has been in partnership with the Black Family Land Trust and Kentucky State University, strives to build momentum, foster relationships, develop trust, and expand capacity to serve women producers, particularly African American women. It further addresses both gender and racial discrimination that women farmers and landowners face when they try to access financial, technical and informational resources to support their farming operations.
Based at the AFT Southeast office in Louisville, Gwishiri joins the organization from University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension as a Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent, where she focused on local food systems, including farmers market access to low-income and non-traditional extension families. She grew up in North Carolina and earned her Master’s degree in agricultural education from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
“I am excited to join AFT and work across the Southeast to support historically underserved women in the region,” said Gwishiri. “There has already been great progress in the region, and I think there is limitless potential to expand our outreach and programmatic efforts to other parts of the region.”
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American Farmland Trust is the only national organization that takes a holistic approach to agriculture, focusing on the land itself, the agricultural practices used on that land, and the farmers and ranchers who do the work. AFT launched the conservation agriculture movement and continues to raise public awareness through our No Farms, No Food message. Since our founding in 1980, AFT has helped permanently protect over 6.8 million acres of agricultural lands, advanced environmentally-sound farming practices on millions of additional acres and supported thousands of farm families.