INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — They’re more than half of the human population – and also more than half the student enrollment in Purdue University’s College of Agriculture.

But it wasn’t always that way; though 58 percent of the college’s students today are women, according to Glenn W. Sample Dean of Agriculture Jay Akridge, they only represented about 5 percent a half-century ago. And a photo of Purdue ag students near the beginning of the 20th century shows just men.

Akridge handed out annual Women in Agriculture Awards at the Indiana State Fair last week, to Cornucopia Farm co-owner Linda Baird of Scottsburg and AgrIInstitute Executive Director Beth Archer.

Baird, 54, has come a long way from that little girl on a dairy farm, figuratively and literally. Growing up in Cleveland, Tenn., she met her husband, Kevin, through his uncle, who had moved there. Five years later they were married, and she moved to his native Indiana.

For a year early in the marriage, they tried dairy farming as their parents had, but it just wasn’t right for them. Today, they grow corn, soybeans and mums and raise some cattle and goats, but Cornucopia is known for its fall squash. Including pumpkins, Baird said they grow roughly 90 varieties of squash and gourds. This started early in the marriage, when she convinced Kevin they should grow two acres of pumpkins.

“I never considered another career but agriculture,” she said – and while she’s glad they tried dairy farming and doesn’t regret abandoning that specialty, she admits, “When I walk through the barn at the State Fair and see all those beautiful cows, I do miss it.”

Cornucopia is an agritourism business open to the public, with corn and soybean mazes, education and play areas, petting farm and a market. Baird said fun is important, but educating the 5,000 fall visitors about agriculture is her chief goal. “Any activity we do at our farm, we try to tie it to farming in some way,” she explained.

School tours may be her favorite aspect. When she, Kevin and adult sons Michael and Jared are working in the heat, she remembers visitors such as the second-grader who told her the tour was “the best day of my life!” As he ages into a taxpayer and voter, Baird said hopefully he will retain that positive feeling about farms.

“It delights me to see so many young women choosing agriculture” as a career, she said of the enrollment at Purdue’s College of Ag.

Her own work is not limited to farm and agribusiness co-management. She is employed part-time off the farm, too, as well as founding See What Ag Gives, or SWAG, with four other women in Washington County last year. SWAG promotes awareness of ag at the county fair through a game involving questions around the grounds about various commodities.

It also started an annual local Ag Hall of Fame award in 2014 with a dinner and honors at the fair. Baird said ag people are business professionals, and SWAG believes it important to portray this to the public. More than 31 agribusinesses and farmers supported and 625 community members participated in SWAG’s first year.

“We felt it was important, as farmers, that this was agriculture and agriculture-supported,” she said.

This will also be the fourth year of her farm’s Harvest of Hope Walk, which benefits the American Cancer Society. In mid-2012, while the family was planning their first October fundraising walk, Baird was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was around this time she heard of growing and selling pink pumpkins to benefit that research – and of course she wanted in on it.

And, she tries to visit her Southern family when she can, describing East Tennessee as “the best part of the world, next to Indiana.”

Baird received the Women in Agriculture Achievement Award for being directly involved in a farming operation. As the Leadership Award recipient, Archer is not required to meet this criterion, but she did grow up in a farm family, with one set of grandparents raising hogs in Tipton County and the others working as dairy farmers in Evansville. Until the fourth grade, she lived on a farm.

With a degree in home economics and education, she worked as a home ec teacher, then as a home ec consultant with the Indiana education department and a director of the former Future Homemakers of America (now Family, Career and Community Leaders of America). Her passion for education eventually led to the job of coordinator for the Indiana Institute of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition, which in the mid-1990s became the Indiana Agricultural Leadership Program (ALP).

Archer, 58, will soon celebrate 25 years with the program, which is now AgrIInstitute. It helps ag professionals develop leadership skills for their businesses and communities. She is working with her 12th two-year class – and has shepherded more than 400 people through its ranks.

“So, you look across that landscape of folks, and you look across the landscape of the industry” in Indiana, she said, “and it’s pretty impressive, the people who’ve been through the program.” That includes retiring Indiana Farm Bureau President Don Villwock, who received an Indiana AgriVision Award last week (see related article).

This AgrIInstitute class is composed of 19 men and seven women, but she said in the previous 2-3 classes women were between one-third and half the enrollment and that had increased over the life of the program. “We are seeing such an increased trend of women engaged in agriculture,” Archer noted.

She thinks it’s because women are detail-oriented about business and given to be good nurturers of livestock, but also that society is more open to women taking on ag roles requiring critical thinking, technology know-how and engineer problem-solving.

She has actively encouraged women to pursue careers in ag, to join the “amazing team” of ALP and AgrIInstitute graduates across the state. Like a lot of teachers, she “gets goosebumps” when she walks into a meeting or other activity being headed up by one of her people, and that it’s exciting to see one in charge, putting their training to use.

Archer has also served on the Indiana Rural Development Council and the Cooperative Development Center, as chair of both. She volunteers with the National FFA Convention and other groups that focus on ag, youth development, leadership and rural advancement.

For support, she thanked, among others, her husband, Jim, six children and 14 grandkids.