The Woman Bringing Attention to Female Ag Tech Entrepreneurs
When Amy Wu started covering agriculture in Salinas, CA, as a journalist, she noticed a lack of women, particularly women of color, represented in ag tech, writes Jackie Cooperman at Worth. With From Farms to Incubators, she’s attempting to change that. A self-proclaimed “big city person” from New York’s Westchester County, Wu makes an unlikely agricultural hero. But since 2015, she’s turned her attention to telling the stories of women and underrepresented minorities working in the burgeoning industry.
Expanding beyond her documentary From Farms to Incubators: Telling the Stories of Minority Women Entrepreneurs in the Salinas Valley and Beyond, Wu’s on a mission to chronicle their lives. “I see From Farms to Incubators not as an official company or nonprofit, but as a bit of a movement,” says Wu, who splits her time between Salinas and New York’s Hudson Valley, where she works in communications for a nonprofit farm. Photographs from her book, From Farms to Incubators: Telling the Stories of Women Innovators in Agtech (Linden Publishing, early 2021) will be showcased in an October 2020 exhibit at Salinas’ National Steinbeck Center.
Q: What prompted you to found From Farms to Incubators?
A: It started with journalism. I was sent to Salinas to cover agriculture. Agriculture doesn’t run in my family at all, but in Salinas it was a bell weather beat. It’s a $9 billion industry there. Eighty percent of the United States’ leafy greens are grown there.
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