Women in Ag Award
Award for women in the agricultural sector
The Women in Ag Award, presented by DLG and „Women in Ag Magazine“, celebrates women from around the world who are driving the future of agriculture with innovation, expertise, and passion. In four categories – Farming, Agribusiness, Education, and Technology & Research – the award highlights female contributions and shares the stories behind these inspiring women.
The award ceremonies take place alternately at AGRITECHNICA or EuroTier.
Women in Ag Award 2025
Further information and registration instructions can be found on the
Winners of 2023
Category FARMING
Kate Hoare
Kate Hoare runs a dairy farm in Southeast Cornwall with her husband. She introduced a new model for sustainable farming, installing a biomethane capturing slurry lagoon. This solution is able to reduce the impact of their activity, producing gas that can be reutilized for work, eventually fueling the tractor and generator, which means that the whole farm can be completely off-grid.
Onyaole Patience Koku
Onyaole Patience Koku is a seasoned entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in agriculture in Nigeria. Together with her husband, she has a 12,000 broiler chicken per cycle farm and local and international commodity trading in Nigeria. Patience promotes access to scientific and innovative knowledge to increase efficiency and leads by example as a practitioner and farmer.
Judith de Vor
Judith has a dairy and educational farm; she farms together with her husband Rick. They have 160 cows in total and farm in a regenerative and sustainable way; with lots of attention to nature, biodiversity and their environment. Judith organizes all kind of activities for creating understanding and awareness and being to connect to people. The activities include open farm days, workshops and educational programs for school classes; people from the city, business meetings and policy makers are regular visitors.
Category AGRIBUSINESS
Anna Maria Nunez Vega
Anna is a process engineer and a food quality expert for Grain Technik Pvt. Ltd. She founded and headed the International Rice Milling Academy in Bangalore. Anna has been relentlessly working on improving the food and feed safety and security situation worldwide. Her driving force is the desire to minimize all kind of losses during grain processing by improving the storage technology as well as educating customers, especially in tropical conditions where the storage losses are the highest.
Joana Paiva
Joana’s (PhD, Professor) work spans sustainability, disease prediction, medical devices, food quality and agrifood manufacturing. She collaborates with diverse academic teams, earning international and national scientific recognition. This includes nominations from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), Forbes’ “30 Under 30 in Science & Healthcare” recognition, and distinctions like “Women in Science, 2021” from FCT & Ciência Viva, the “2021 Women Entrepreneurship Award” from the Católica Business School of Economics, and the “2019 Born From Knowledge” award from ANI.
Joana has raised around 8 million euros in private investments and public grants, showcasing her ability to secure support for innovative projects. She actively fosters innovation and scientific curiosity among students and researchers, significantly advancing science on a broader scale.
Forget Shareka
Forget’s contribution to sustainable agriculture and food systems has opened both local and international doors, where she has been having high-level discussions and advocating for women and small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe and Africa at large. Currently, Forget is based in Wales, UK, where she is doing her graduate scheme program working as a sustainability consultant helping Small and Medium Enterprises in agriculture, manufacturing, retail, and the energy sector shape their sustainability goals and ambitions for net zero.
Category EDUCATION
Amina Ali
Amina is an advocate for women's rights in agriculture at national and international levels. Armed with her expertise and the voices of the strong-willed women whose lives have been transformed by her center's programs, she has become an influential voice in steering policy changes that prioritize gender equality in agriculture.
Salatu Abubakar
Salatu Abubakar combines her expertise in creating positive impact among women small holder farmers, women processors, and farmer families through capacity buildings and agribusiness with a genuine passion for empowering women in agriculture. As the Northern Regional Officer in Charge of Women in Agricultural Development, she continues to make a lasting impact on the lives of countless women by mentoring them as well as providing them with opportunities for growth through market linkage which had a positive impact on their businesses and livelihoods.
Prof. Dr. Nirit Berstein
Nirit is a global scholar and educator of agricultural research, contributing at international level across the world. She has made extraordinary contributions to all components of agricultural science (research, teaching, engagement, service and leadership) that are internationally recognized. She is a global leader in the area of cannabis research focused on strengthening its medicinal value.
Funmilayo Ogunleke
Funmilayo is deputy rector of the Federal College of Animal Health and Production Technology, Ibadan. She has made it her mission to promote dairy farming and production in Nigeria. For example, she hosted the 2022 World School Milk Day in the country and coordinated the 2023 World Milk Day program. As a lecturer, Funmilayo has broad access to young people and encourages them to go into agriculture or study agriculture.
Category TECHNOLOGY & RESEARCH
Alfiya Kayumova
Alfiya is an entrepreneur and agritech expert with over 10 years of experience in business development, investment banking and agriculture. As the co-founder and CEO of Green Growth, she provides farmers with essential information about field performance and yield data, helping them solve the problem of inefficient use of inputs like fertilizers and seeds and thereby increase profitability.
Dr. Stefanie Hartje
Stefanie combines several functions in the company in one person: she is manager, chief scientist and mentor, as well as responsible for the integration of several departments. She plays a key role in promoting state-of-the-art scientific techniques in the field of potato breeding. With her commitment and innovative ideas, she plays a decisive role in making the potato fit for the future and strengthening it for the coming challenges in agriculture (climate change, drought, no pesticides, etc.).
Solvejg Kristensen
Solveig is Managing Director at Eye-Grain. A company that continues to introduce new technologies to the industry and were first-movers to monitor in-bin moisture concentration and monitoring of CO2-concentration to determine hot-spots and spoilage at an early stage caused by insects or fungi. She does research for Aalborg University, is named on numeral academic papers and promotes measures for her employees to heighten mental health and reduce stress.
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