This summer, I had the opportunity to work with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Madison County (CCE) in Morrisville, NY. CCE Madison is a not-for-profit organization working to bring together the local community with research to support families, farms, and businesses in a rapidly changing world. CCE places a key emphasis on all forms of community sustainability, including economic, ecological, social well-being, and agricultural education.
What I love most about CCE Madison is the work each member of the organization puts in to make sure each resident of the Madison County community is supported and connected. Through this process, my office has established deep roots and trust across many communities over the years. Throughout my project, those relationships allowed me to expand the breadth of my learning. I was able to receive support and input from farmers and customers alike on my project and studies this summer.
My work primarily focused on conducting research to find innovative solutions addressing the local food economy in Madison County, where I spent the summer focusing on how artificial intelligence can support the growth and resilience of local food economies. My research focus this summer aligned with CCE’s focus on supporting all stakeholders in local food economies here in Madison County by introducing new methods to the county that aligned with the rapidly changing technology landscape that AI continues to bring to today’s world, leaving an impact across all global industries.
While conducting my research this summer, CCE Madison guided me to take a specific focus on farmers markets in the county to address how CCE can bridge the gap between consumers and farmers by bringing consumers back to local markets. Over the course of the summer, I conducted a literature review on the benefits of online food marketplaces for both start-up and established rural farmers, as well as conducted consumer surveys at various farmers markets and local food events across Madison County to understand what goods are most often purchased at markets, how do people hear about local food events, and what barriers may exist to prevent people from attending weekly farmers markets in the summer.
A crucial insight my consumer survey offered was that convenience and uncertainty of what goods would be available at farmers markets each week were the most prominent barriers recorded within the survey sample. The consumer survey and informal interviews were held with farmers, vendors, and consumers at local events, which led me to prototype and develop “Madison Grown”, a Madison County-focused online food market developed using Claude coding. The purpose of the app is to connect consumers with farmers and vendors across all five markets in Madison County, with a focus on bringing convenience and certainty about what is going to be available at markets that week for consumers, and providing farmers with an efficient way to sell and market their products to boost business performance and awareness.
Consumers can browse products across each market that sellers have posted, pre-order goods, track what products they are interested in, and sign up for various community events hosted by farms to support local agritourism to further raise awareness about the importance of supporting local. On the farmers' side of the app, farms can post products weekly in seconds while marketing their farm and goods as much as they would like, whether that be through including photos, prices per unit, or creating their own profile to share with consumers different offerings happening at their farm. Farmers are also able to log and track inventory across all goods they produce and platforms they sell at ( online, farm stand, markets, etc.) to track and assess business performance easily, while consumer pre-orders allow farmers to earn sales before arriving at the markets that week.
With the ability to leverage AI coding capabilities, I was able to physically show the true capabilities of “Madison Grown” and develop and present a product in a matter of weeks, in such a way that also showed the true capabilities and potential the app held that would have taken a longer period of time to build out. Through the use of Claude code as a tool in my research this summer, I was able to showcase the support AI can bring to local communities, especially in a unique field such as local food and agriculture.
What I valued most about working with CCE Madison this summer was that it was my first experience working in agriculture, and I was given a unique opportunity to learn about the complex production and food systems that persist all around Colgate. The fact that I was placed into a completely different environment this summer, which consisted of constantly meeting new people and learning new things every day, and that exists within a 20-minute drive from Colgate, was shocking. I was able to take my interests in economic theory, markets, and sustainability that I have developed in the classroom and apply them in a completely new context in food and agriculture, which is what drew me to working with CCE specifically this summer.
My biggest takeaway from this summer was trying to understand just how complex and difficult growing continues to be for farmers, not just in upstate New York, but across the country, and how crucial it is to build support for farmers by developing tools to sustain food systems both locally and globally. I have cherished my time at CCE Madison, along with the learning and relationships I have built that I will continue to revisit well into the future.