Cornell Interns Working on Urban Ag in NYC

Cornell University recently partnered with Agritecture Consulting to secure a National Science Foundation grant in order to support the development of urban farms, define the needs of agriculture entrepreneurs and to support platforms that share best practices.

Under this grant, Cornell collaborated with four New York City urban farming companies to employ four Cornell undergraduates for summer 2018. Brian Byun ‘19 worked for Square Roots, Mason Leist ‘20 worked for Smallhold, Christian Kanlian ‘20 worked for Agritecture, and Katherine Rogers ‘20 worked for AgTech X.

These interns were tasked with conducting an independent research project to better understand how CEA fits into the  broader food system in New York. They specifically chose to explore the needs of CEA businesses and developed a comprehensive survey that will serve as a benchmark for future research and education programs.

The survey is currently available to the public and we encourage you to take it if you are part of a CEA operation. We also encourage you to share the survey with any organizations and operations partaking in CEA.

All data will remain anonymous but summarized in aggregate to help understand trends and needs across farms and CEA businesses.

For those who complete the survey, we will happily extend you a free ticket to the final event of Agritecture Xchange, “Next Generation Food & Agriculture Solutions: Student Presentations, Panel, & Happy Hour Finale,” where the interns will be presenting their research findings with Anu Rangarajan, Director of the Cornell Small Farms Program on Friday, September 28th.

You can find the survey on Cornell's website. It contains 79 questions and it takes approximately 35 minutes to complete. If you have any questions or concerns about the survey, please feel free to reach out to Anu at ar47@cornell.edu.