One in eight farms in Ireland are owned by women, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), and about a third of people who work on farms are women.
Until recently women were regarded as playing a supporting role in farming to husbands, fathers and brothers but this is slowly changing as female-led farms emerge across the country, albeit mainly in areas where land prices are lower and farms are smaller.
But there are women breeding herds of cattle, sheep and goats and managing woodlands. In the past few years, higher grants to upgrade farm buildings and equipment targeted at female farmers are encouraging more women into leadership roles in farming.
Karen McCabe, the farmer representative on the recently formed Women in Agriculture Working Group in Ireland, says it can still be intimidating for female farmers walking into a cattle mart full of men. “Yet the mindset is changing,” she says. “There are many more female vets working with large animals now, and female farmers are better at embracing new farming practices than male farmers.”
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The United Nations has declared 2026 International Year of the Woman Farmer. This global initiative aims to increase awareness of the crucial role women play in agrifood systems – and more specifically in food security, nutrition and poverty eradication.
Sebana Moynagh (53) is the owner of a pedigree herd of Charolais cows in Co Cavan. She took over the running of the farm from her father after studying in Multyfarnham Agricultural College, Co Westmeath, and working on farms in Donegal and Cork as part of the farm apprenticeship scheme.
“I’ve loved farming since I was a three-year-old in Wellington boots following my father around the farm,” she says. “I didn’t really like school but I loved doing the jobs on the farm in the evenings.”
There was never any doubt in the household who would run the farm when her father, Joe Moynagh, took early retirement in the late-1990s.
The second-eldest of four children, Sebana was the only one dedicated to farm work. “My mother, Winnie, always said that whoever is interested will get the farm ... My parents have always let me make my own decisions, although my mother is sometimes still asked if she had no sons.”
Sebana’s older brother, Peter – who had no interest in farming – died aged 23 of leukaemia. Her younger brother, Breffni, works as a farm contractor, and her younger sister, Anne, is an accountant.
She is grateful to have been given the opportunity to do what she loves. “It’s amazing the number of women who are interested in farming who don’t get the farm. I hate to hear a farm is passed on to the son just to keep the family name on the land.”
Moynagh walks among her 80 suckler cows and their calves grazing in fields on her 50-hectare farm overlooking Lough Sheelin. She explains how the suckler cows remain with their calves until they are weaned at nine months, and each cow gives birth to about 10 calves in her lifetime. A camera system allows her to monitor them closely when they are close to calving.
Later we walk through the shed where the cows spend the winter months, as Moynagh points out the flexible divisions in the cubicles and the comfortable rubber mats the cows lie on. “Cows like their comfort, and each one has her individual cubicle,” she says. “My job is to keep them healthy.”
Although clear that she is running a business – selling her bulls and heifers to other farms and carefully planning the birth of each calf using artificial insemination – she is very fond of her herd too.
“I like seeing how the calves turn out and that the ones I sell do well for other farmers,” says Moynagh. Working mostly on her own seven days a week – while her husband, Flor McCarthy, works abroad for long periods of time – she has cows calving from January to March and again from August to December.
Do you think women farmers will save farming in Ireland?
— Lucy Tottenham
Moynagh also plays her part in reducing agricultural emissions by using special equipment and adapted fertiliser to reduce ammonia gas rising into the atmosphere. The farm has underground water tanks to catch rain for washing sheds, an area of bogland left for wildlife and there are plenty of trees and hedgerows on the farm.
“I love the lifestyle and I’m out in all weathers. I’m my own boss and the jobs get done but I’ll be the last generation of my family farming this land as there are no relations interested in taking it over.”
What advice would she give to young female farmers? “Go and get lots of experience with animals. Ask questions and meet like-minded people.”
Has she been treated any differently to her male counterparts? “I haven’t faced any discrimination – maybe I don’t see it or I’m not looking for it. But there are a lot of women working with their husbands on farms who don’t get recognition for the work they do.”
On a smallholding in Drumcong, Co Leitrim, overlooking Lough Scur, Lisa Gifford tends a small herd of goats, her daughter, Gypsy Gifford makes cheese and ice cream and Gypsy’s wife, Richelle South manages the business.
The deep red corrugated iron roofs of the outbuildings on Leitrim Hill Creamery stand picturesquely next to fields of goats. American-born Lisa Gifford (83) speaks of her ancestorial connections to Ireland and the circuitous route that brought her back to live in the county in which her paternal grandmother was born.
“I came here in the 1960s and it felt like home and I came back in 2016 to an international goats conference and bought this property,” she says.
“I feel useful here,” she says. “The land lets me work with it and it doesn’t mind if I make mistakes.” The property includes about two acres of land, and they rent another acre, giving them about 1.2 hectares in total.
Gifford believes that while domesticated goats need to be carefully looked after, their light weight makes them easiest for women to work with.
She vaccinates, deworms and deflukes the goats herself, explaining how, in the damp climate, they easily pick up parasites including the fluke worm through their hooves.
After a few years in Leitrim, Lisa Gifford was joined by her daughter, Gypsy; her wife, Richelle; and their daughter, Shiloh.
If the whole of Ireland was to go organic, that would be wonderful
— Lucy Tottenham
The couple were living and working in Singapore when the Covid pandemic was declared. “The pandemic accelerated our decision to come here rather than somewhere else in Europe first,” she says.
On arrival the couple began scaling up Lisa’s operation, converting an old barn to a creamery for their cheeses and ice cream, setting up a cheese shop, The Hidden Corner, in nearby Carrick-on-Shannon and using a mobile ice cream cart to sell their ice cream. “It’s a great balance for the three of us,” says Gypsy. “We are still in the start-up phase but we will make a sustainable living here. The measure of success isn’t just monetary – it’s connection to tradition, community and land in a diverse ecosystem.”
Lisa has an American pension to supplement her income.
Gypsy says: “The number one meat eaten on the planet is goat’s meat, not beef or lamb, and I predict that more farmers will get into goat’s meat production because goats are easier on the land, their meat is just as high in protein but lower in cholesterol and they don’t produce as much methane.”
Lucy Tottenham is an organic sheep farmer who also manages woodland using continuous cover forestry methods near Ashford in Co Wicklow.
“Do you think women farmers will save farming in Ireland?” she asks, as she drives along with her sheep herder and his collie dogs to the top corner of her large farm in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains.
She seems well placed to answer her own question, having managed this 300-hectare farm since her husband, Geoffry, died in 2013. Their children, Joanna and Ed, were 18 and 15 at the time.
“I had already been doing the books and I was up to speed with the farm when he died, so I just got on with it and learned on the hoof,” she says. “We’ve been fortunate to have very good people working part-time on the farm.”
Having grown up on a sheep and cattle farm near Tuam, Co Galway, and studied business and finance of agriculture, she was ready to co-manage a farm when she met Geoffry.
“I love farming. I’ve always loved the sheep, and my husband was passionate about forestry and sustainable woodlands.” About two-thirds of the farm is managed by continuous-cover forestry, an approach that allows for natural regeneration of a mixed woodland through regular thinning of trees rather than clear felling.
In 2015 Tottenham converted the farm to organic, and in 2020 she began rearing a breed of sheep, called Easy Care, precisely because they are easier to care for.
“They shed their fleeces so they don’t need to be sheared. And they lamb outdoors unassisted. I was getting absolutely exhausted with indoor lambing, which is extremely hard work.”
The ewes are kept in the lower fields when close to lambing, and then the lambs stay with their mothers for 12-16 weeks. Once they are weaned, the males are sold to other breeders or sent to the factory for meat. Some of the females are kept for breeding and others sold to other breeders. The ewes birth two lambs each time and will go on to have lambs for five or six years. Tottenham keeps about 400 ewes and 150 ewe lambs.
“Although I have fewer sheep now being organic, I get a 10-15 premium for organic lamb and I can sell the ewe lambs for breeding.”
Tottenham believes female participation in farming will continue to grow with the right supports and encouragement. She also believes women farmers are more innovative.
“I’m always trying different things. I plan to grow oats next year to sell for porridge oats and I have just harvested a multicrop of peas, oats and barley for grain for the sheep. If the whole of Ireland was to go organic, that would be wonderful.”
At the Women Step Into Farming event at the European Commission office in Dublin on International Women’s Day 2025, Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon said “we need cultural change to include more women in farming so that they don’t have to experience the presumption that the farmer is a man”. A farmer himself, Heydon also grew up on farm, led by his mother after his father died when he was eight. Heydon says one of his goals as Minister is to increase the representative of women as farm holders and key decision makers in agriculture.
The National Ploughing Championships 2025 take place September 16th-18th in Screggan, Tullamore, Co Offaly
