Recent feminist scholarship has played a critical role in illuminating the gendered nature of agricultural work, the attendant inequities in access to resources, and material changes in quality of life for women.  However, because theoretical orientations have largely favored the macro-structural, political economy domain, the cultural realm has been accorded relatively less attention as parallel sites at which farm womenâs invisibility as material agents in the agricultural sphere is perpetuated and reinforced.  Combining strategies from critical media studies on gender and socio-seimiotics, this paper explores the agricultural media's symbolic appropriation and commoditization of cultural images of nature and gender through a contextual analysis of petrochemical advertisements in two Midwestern farm magazines÷Wallaces Farmer and Successful Farmer. The social and pedagogical implications of perpetuating patriarchal gender stereotypes in an arena of production that has remained relatively impermeable to feminist forces of social change are also examined.

Keywords: gender, culture, symbolism, media representation, sustainable agriculture.