Wichita ? Women in Kansas are making strides in agriculture, one of the state’s economic bastions, the National Agricultural Statistics Service reported Thursday.

Some 21,632 farmers in Kansas are women, or nearly 9 percent of the state’s farmers.

Inroads for women are being made in specialty crops or livestock such as horses, said Eddie Wells, a statistician with the Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service. More women also are participating in government programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program that do not require physically heavy field work. Through CRP, the U.S. Department of Agriculture pays landowners to keep some land off-limits to grazing and farming.

“The more traditional agriculture in Kansas still is strongly leaning toward male orientation,” Wells said.

The number of Kansas women listed as the primary operators of grain farms, for example, plummeted from 1,863 women in 1997 to 898 women in 2002.

Kansas farm women also still have a long way to go before they catch up to the national statistics, which show 27 percent of farmers nationwide are women.

The survey also provided for the first time a census-based look at net farm income. In Kansas, that figure was $13,070 per farm in 2002.

But the value of Kansas farmland and buildings soared by 19 percent between 1997 and 2002, the census showed. The average value per farm rose by more than $88,000 during the five-year period between the surveys. The average value per acre went up by more than $100 to $687 per acre in 2002.