BRAVA Magazine named Yimmuaj Yang, community director at Groundswell Conservancy, a Woman of the Year for 2023!
Yang joined Groundswell Conservancy in 2020. During her time with the land trust, she has worked to support non-white farmers, helping build awareness and facilitate connections to available farmland, including starting two local farms.
“Land access is a barrier, because it’s getting more and more expensive. Farmers who want to farm do not have access to land,” said Yang. “We have a crisis right now. The average age of the farmer in Wisconsin is 57 … but their children are not interested in continuing to farm.”
One initiative that stands out is the Linden Cohousing Farmers Market, which Yang started in 2020 to help Hmong farmers, many with limited language and technology skills, to pivot to online selling, which was especially important during the early days of the pandemic.
In 2023, Yang hopes to establish a third farm near Madison that will be accessible to farmers of color.
Read the full profile in BRAVA magazine here.
Photo by Hillary Schave.
