DENVER, COLORADO, US — While the number of women in agriculture and agribusiness has climbed in recent years, including at the highest levels of companies and organizations, a panel of female industry executives told delegates at last week’s Women in Agribusiness Summit in Denver, Colorado, US, there’s more work to be done.

“We can’t just be happy that we’ve made some progress,” said Maria Lewis, chief diversity officer, Faegre Drinker. “We have to be intentional in every step we take forward.”

The summit, held Sept. 24-26 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver, drew nearly 1,000 attendees from 47 states and nine countries. Speakers covered a wide range of topics impacting the industry, including sustainability and artificial intelligence. Lewis was part of a four-person panel leading a session entitled, “Transforming the Workplace.”

The effort to diversify the US workforce, including in agriculture, has encountered headwinds recently as some companies, feeling political pressure, have quietly shelved their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs that were started several years ago.

The panelists agreed progress can still be made — with or without the DEI label.

“When I talk to my peers the sentiment seems to be that the work is not stopping,” said April Love, vice president and chief inclusion officer for Sysco Corp. “We talk about it maybe in different ways, maybe using different language. It seems that most people are generally supportive of the movement if the term DEI is not used.”

Love cautioned that pushing the agenda forward will require not just women, noting that one of the keys to developing a strong culture of diversity and inclusion is finding influential men in a company who are willing to advocate for women and other minorities.

“Anytime you start talking about an initiative to empower or develop women, if men are not in the mix to me that’s a non-starter,” Love said. “If you have a man in the company who is influential and you have a good relationship, maybe this event is a place to bring him so that he can hear from himself what women are feeling and sharing in these spaces.”

Perhaps the most discussed topic at the conference was sustainability, as producers and end users discussed how the movement has impacted them operationally and financially.

“It’s a major goal of all agribusinesses,” said Janet Fisher, content manager for WIA, who moderated a session on the subject. “Everybody has sustainability goals, plans and programs and all of them need producers upstream from them to engage and lower the total carbon footprint of every product they make. But many of the farmers don’t feel they’ve made it worth their while. That’s not to say they’re not doing the work to get there.”

The session, “Engaging Farmers and Ranchers in the Industry’s Sustainability Programs,” was at times tense as representatives from different parts of the supply chain spoke about the challenges of meeting sustainability goals.

Fisher said the session was designed to kickstart a conversation between the various stakeholders.

“It’s going to be a tough conversation, but if we don’t have the conversation we’ll never get to where we all want to go,” she said.

Another session focused on the upcoming US federal elections and how the outcome could impact agricultural producers and agribusiness.

Mary Kay Thatcher, senior manager, federal government and industry relations for Syngenta, told the audience that the Democrats will likely cede control of the Senate to the Republicans. But the House of Representatives could go either way, and the presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican challenger, also appears to be a tossup.

“We likely will still have a ton of gridlock in this country after this election,” Thatcher said, noting that regardless of the outcome, the balance of power in Congress will be by the thinnest of margins.

While a Trump administration might be more appealing to agricultural producers and agribusinesses from a tax burden perspective, Thatcher said the former president’s record on the important issue of free trade is not good. However, she noted that the Biden administration has also shown protectionist tendencies.

“We’re becoming much more protectionist in this country than we’ve ever been,” she said. “I don’t see either administration being really positive for agriculture on that issue.”

Thatcher said one of the biggest problems is the United States “doesn’t do free trade agreements anymore.” Trade agreements have been negotiated in the Trump and Biden administrations, but none of them were focused on reducing tariffs.

“There hasn’t been a free trade agreement in 12 years that has dealt with high tariffs,” Thatcher said.

The WIA Summit has not only grown larger in recent years, but it’s also trended younger. More than 50% of the delegates at this year’s summit were millennials (ages 28-43), said Carrie Vita, event director of the WIA Summit.

This year’s attendees took advantage of a new “networking” track in which they broke into small groups to discuss topics that included artificial intelligence, cultivating business relationships, and advancing sustainability in food systems.

“We’re trying to create more intentional networking, which is why we added that track this year,” she said. “It’s smaller than the other ones; there was probably 80 to 90 per session. It gave them that extra networking opportunity, which is what a lot of them came here for. I think the networking track is going to be a permanent thing going forward.”