Julie Kikkert (28 years) began her career in CCE in 1999 when she shared a Vegetable Specialist position with veteran Carol MacNeil (who retired in 2016 after serving 40 years for Cornell Cooperative Extension) in the Ontario, Wayne, Yates and Steuben (OWYS) Vegetable Program. In 2005, the OWYS program merged with the CCE Lake Plains Vegetable Program (LPVP), which covered Niagara, Orleans, Monroe, Genesee, Erie and Niagara counties to become the Cornell Vegetable Program (CVP). This is when Julie became the Processing Vegetable Specialist (replacing Arlie McFaul). Julie has also graciously served as the Team Leader of the CVP since 2008. Julie hails from Burtonsville, MD and holds her MS and Ph. D in Horticulture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The greatest joys of her career in CVP are working with growers, processors, industry members and Cornell faculty to bring solutions to crop production issues.
Judson Reid (27 years) began his career in CCE in 2000 in Yates County as a generalist extension agent before he joined the CVP in 2005 as a Fresh Market Vegetable Specialist. He has been a trailblazer in working with plain-sect communities and season Extension, especially high tunnels. Today, he manages a research program that examines soil and crop health, primarily for high tunnel tomatoes and cover crops in high tunnels. In 2010, he became the Team Leader for the newly formed Harvest New York statewide agricultural team that today has 25 Specialists. Jud hails from Jefferson County, NY and was trained by the powerhouse Dr. Helene Dillard at Cornell University and has his MS in Plant Pathology. The greatest joys of Jud’s career in CVP are his relationships with growers, witnessing people successfully grow and market their crops and working with their families.
Christy Hoepting (26 years) started with the CCE Lake Plains Vegetable Program team in 2001 and officially became the Muck Onion Specialist in 2005 when the CVP was formed. She also has crop responsibilities in cabbage and other brassicas and garlic. She has been a trailblazer in conducting on-farm research trials, especially in fungicide, insecticide and herbicide evaluations, but has done everything under the sun, whatever the growers need, including variety and fertility trials and even slug trials (which involved spraying after midnight). She also runs a muck onion scouting program that is the envy of all growers. Christy is a career-Extension Educator, and this is the only professional position she has ever held. She hopes to retire from the CVP, defying the odds of her generation to work for the same organization her entire career. Christy hails from Chatsworth, Ontario, Canada, and has a MS in Plant Pathology and Applied Entomology from the University of Guelph. The greatest joy of Christy’s career with CVP is being able to watch her hard work pay off. She sees her fingerprints all over the industries that she serves as her growers adopt her research-based recommendations. It is her pleasure and privilege to be an integral part of the New York vegetable industry that helps feed America.
Robert Hadad (21 years) started with the CVP in 2005 as a Fresh Market Specialist. He has been a trailblazer in food safety his entire career with nationwide recognition for his expertise in this area. Robert has also dug into several non-mainstream subject matter that previously had not gotten any attention such as growing specialty produce including ethnic vegetables, scorzonera, salsify and winter storage root crops and helping small-scale growers with enterprise budgets. Prior to joining the CVP, Robert began working in Extension in 1995 with the University of Kentucky working extensively with organic farms on a Kellogg Foundation project as well as assisting tobacco farmers with the diversification to vegetable production. Later he worked for North Carolina State University Extension and then he was a research fellow with the University of Minnesota as part of a team researching rotational cover cropping in organic systems. He hails from Rhode Island and has a BS from the University of Rhode Island in Horticulture and a MS in Crop Science with a focus on Plant Breeding with a minor in Entomology, where he investigated plant-insect interactions and using plant extracts for insect management. The greatest joy of Robert’s career in CVP is working with a great team and seeing the work we do improve farming across the region.
Elizabeth Buck (8 years) will always be one of CVP’s greatest success stories because, before becoming a Fresh Market Vegetable Specialist with the team in 2018 (replacing Darcy Telenko), she worked for the team as a Technician I beginning in 2012. After quickly being promoted to a Program Aid I, she continued in that role until 2015. She “cut her teeth” in weed science with Christy’s early work in trying to figure out how to manage tough perennial weed problems (perennial sowthistle and creeping yellowcress) in muck-grown onion. In fact, she was instrumental in the development and approach that Christy continues to take towards addressing weed issues. Elizabeth had so much fun with these projects that she went on to get her MS at the University of Guelph in Canada in Weed Science. Elizabeth runs a highly diversified extension program to support the breadth of fresh market growers, emphasizing responsiveness to in-field challenges. Her research program flexes to explore a range of production questions, with common themes of improved crop protection, varietal and horticultural technique evaluation, and soil health. She loves to teach and is a fantastic educator and has been a trailblazer with her unique presentation styles including her most recent endeavor in developing “hands on” training modules in pesticide safety. She hails from Pine City, NY and got her BS from Cornell University in Plant Science and Agricultural Science. The greatest joy of Elizabeth’s career in CVP is when growers share that something she taught them made a difference in their field or to their farm.
Margie Lund (8 years) became the CVP’s Potato, Dry Bean and Post-Harvest Specialist in 2019, which had been vacant for 2 years since Carol MacNeil retired. She has been steadily building programming in these crops by conducting on-farm variety trials and a potato scouting program, running a trapping network for Western bean cutworm, an insect pest of dry beans, as well as organizing several large educational events and being a prolific writer of newsletter articles. She is the Late Blight Lead for the CVP, a potentially devastating disease of potatoes and tomatoes. Margie hails from Cincinnati, OH and has a Ph.D. in Entomology from Michigan State University. The greatest joy of Margie’s career in CVP is working directly with farmers to help address needs to support western NY potato and dry bean production and organize meetings to provide educational opportunities.
Lori Koenick (7 years) joined the CVP in 2022 as a Program Aid III working for Jud and Robert in fresh market vegetables, food safety, urban agriculture and high tunnels. In 2024, she was promoted to an Extension Support Specialist with responsibilities in urban agriculture, fresh market vegetables and mushrooms. For three years prior to joining the Cornell Vegetable Program, Lori worked in extension roles with Cornell Garden-Based Learning and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Monroe County developing community programs focusing on horticulture and food system topics. She has been steadily building her CVP programming by running a scouting program on urban farms in Buffalo and Rochester, with one of her most recent successes being designing management strategies for swede midge that enables the growers to resume growing susceptible brassica vegetables without economic losses. She has also been prolific in her educational programming, including putting on conferences, workshops and field days, and writing fact sheets and newsletter articles. Lori hails from Potomac, MD and earned a BS in Applied and Environmental Microbiology at West Virginia University followed by a MS in Plant Pathology at Cornell University studying disease management strategies in New York table beet production systems. The greatest joy of Lori’s career in CVP is continuing to learn from and with our incredible community of growers.
Historic Cornell Vegetable Program Photos
