A local Peace River resident is looking to change the narrative on women and agriculture.
Trina Moyles, a native to the region, will debut her first book Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism and the Fight to Feed the World this Friday at an event designed to celebrate both local artists and farmers.
The book highlights various female farmers across eight countries and four continents whom she encountered while working for various food security NGO’s in rural southwest Uganda.
“I met women I was really inspired by and by their work as food producers. I thought that writing a book about women and agricultural would be a way to weave my experiences travelling throughout the world while also bringing attention to the many issues that women are facing as they are trying to grow food and feed their communities, in addition to celebrating their achievements – because I often think that small scale farmers are often looked at as bit players in the larger scheme of agricultural productions.”
Moyles says she wants to change the narrative that women are actually feeding their communities as they are growing food crops versus cash crops.
“I think the book is coming at an interesting time where we are seeing so many different stories about women break into traditionally male-dominated jobs and fields, so I think its a really timely moment for a book about women in agricultural to be released; women have always been on the land but we may not have societal-speaking recognized them as farmers the way we recognize men in our communities as farmers.”
The freelance journalist and writer graduated from Peace River High School and is familiar with the region and the land. 
“I hope this celebrates what women are locally doing here – and I know there are so many women who garden and grow food and work as farmers or are aspiring farmers in the Peace Country (which I feature some of these stories in the Canadian chapter of the book),” she continues, “I hope the book raises awareness about some of the issues women farmers are facing while also being an opportunity to celebrate a literary event in our community.”
The event will center with Trina reading a passage from the introduction of the book followed by a Q&A where she will discuss her motivation, challenges and what sort of impact she hopes the book will have in Canada and over the world.
“Writing a book is challenging; it took me 5 years for to conduct the research, find a literary agent etc, and so it really opened my eyes now that it is done. This is work I am proud to share with the community.”
The book launch is set to take place at Java Domain, Friday April 6th at 7pm.
