Riley Rice ’24 is one of 26 student fellows who completed research with a community-based organization in upstate New York this summer as a part of the Upstate Institute Summer Field School.
Cornell University became New York State’s land grant university in 1865. Land grant universities were created to further instruction in agriculture, science, military science, and engineering while not excluding other scientific fields. As part of Cornell’s land grant mission, a Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) office serves every county in the state. Extension offices serve as a connection between Cornell and the broader New York State community and offer resources in agriculture and food production, children and family health, conservation, community resilience, economic development, and much more. CCE addresses these concerns through outreach, support, and education. My project was focused on Madison County’s centennial farms: farms that have been in operation for 100 years or more.
As a lifelong resident of Upstate New York, I had a general understanding of the extensions’ role within the communities they serve; however, I had never had any direct interaction with them before beginning my Field School Fellowship this summer. The Cooperative Extensions’ mission is much more expansive than I initially realized. CCE offers classes in gardening and canning, as well as presentations about invasive species and other pertinent environmental issues. CCE Madison also organizes a massively successful Open Farm Day each summer, an event that brings community members together to learn about farming from farmers around the county and gives people a chance to visit farms that are not usually open to the public. This connection to the land and the farmers who produce so much for the Madison County community is something that the extension seeks to further everywhere it can.
During my time with CCE Madison, I worked intimately with some of the oldest farms in the county. A centennial farm is a farm that has been in continuous operation for 100 years or more, owned by the same family, positioned on the same land or registered under the same name, or has had periods in which operation ceased but has still accumulated over 100 years of operation. My research involved finding as many farms as I could that met these criteria and conducting interviews with those farmers to learn more about the history of each farm. I wrote articles to share those stories with the broader Madison County community, and I made a recommendation for how the CCE Madison’s Centennial Farm Award should be altered to best celebrate the legacy of agriculture within the county.
I grew up in a rural area that is not so different from Madison County. This means that, in more ways than one, the Madison County community is my community. So when I learned about the opportunity to do community-based research within my community, I had to pursue it. Furthermore, I grew up on a small farm started by my great-great-grandfather. While the farm has changed significantly since its founding around 1890, this family legacy has given me an experience with — and a deep appreciation for — agriculture. As a result of my lived experience, the opportunity to research centennial farms with CCE Madison was the perfect niche for me to fill. I have gained much from this experience and hope to apply aspects of it to my environmental studies major at Colgate for my remaining three semesters. I also believe that an intimate look into the communities of Madison County will also help me channel my political science major in a way that focuses on the improvement of local communities like the one in which I grew up.
Thank you to CCE Madison, the Upstate Institute, and the farmers of Madison County for this fantastic opportunity.