Food Systems & Health
Larkin Podsiedlik, Executive Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Madison County (CCE Madison), built her career across food systems and the nonprofit world, from community nutrition and garden education to philanthropy and SNAP-Ed. She started her most recent position with Extension in 2021. She sees CCE as a natural place for integrative work across agriculture, environment, and health, the fields where she has formal training and is most passionate. “I work here because I love ag and food systems,” she says. While she holds two master’s degrees, including an MPH, “I like to joke that I got my degree in ‘Extension’ because that’s what we are—agriculture, food, and public health.”
Growing up on Long Island, Taylor Rijos experienced firsthand both the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and the community resilience that followed. “That’s what first sparked my interest in how human and environ-mental health systems connect,” she recalls. Later, the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced for her how closely human, animal, and environmental health are intertwined—a concept known as One Health. “I was drawn to Cornell because One Health isn’t just a buzzword here—it’s really embedded in the MPH Program’s curriculum and philosophy,” says Rijos. “It shapes how students and partners think about public health and sustainability.” During her time at Cornell, Rijos dove into projects across many disciplines. She…
For Cole Jamal (they/she), working on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is more than a dream job in federal policy—it’s personal. “At one point in my past, I was on SNAP,” they recall. “Now, I get to help ensure the program is run with integrity—and that people get benefits in a timely way when they need them.” As a SNAP Management Analyst with the USDA’s Northeast Regional Office, Jamal supports SNAP operations across eight states and territories, helping to administer one of the nation’s most critical safety net programs. They serve as a connector across the region’s multiple branches—coordinating logistics, streamlining communications, and strengthening oversight…
Explore the 2025 Cornell Public Health Magazine, a collection of stories celebrating the amazing accomplishments of our students, faculty, alumni, and partners!
Aquaculture – the farming of fish and other aquatic organisms – is the world’s fastest-growing food production system. The sharpest growth in aquaculture is happening in Africa. Average annual growth rates have exceeded 10% in recent years measured by production value. Over the past 10 years in Lake Victoria, shared between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, aquaculture has transformed from a small-scale enterprise into a vast and diverse commercial industry. Lake Victoria is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake. Cage aquaculture, the farming of fish within cages, has expanded rapidly in the…
Since highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H5N1 – better known as bird flu – was first detected in the U.S. in 2022, it has wreaked havoc on the natural world, tearing through delicate populations of wild birds and spreading to mammals, killing some species in devastating numbers. Meanwhile, the disease is also acutely felt by poultry farmers, who see avian influenza as a terrifying new threat to their livelihoods. At the same time, the soaring costs are ultimately passed on to consumers as egg prices have been destabilized. This year, cases are reportedly spiking earlier than experts predicted, sparking major industry concerns over the scale of culls of infected poultry and how this will affect egg production and prices…
When Jarra Jagne, D.V.M. ’90, was growing up in her native country of The Gambia, she was exposed to its rural areas and large populations of livestock during summer vacations accompanying her father on work trips. This fostered a fascination for animals, later heightened by an encounter with the famous James Herriot book, All Creatures Great and Small, which fueled her veterinary calling. “I imagined myself as a James Herriot in Gambia’s rural savanna saving the lives of cows, sheep, goats, and chickens,” says Jagne…
A new free modeling tool is enabling researchers, farmers and food processors to assess how changes in the ways a dairy farm is managed would influence its environmental impact, energy use and economics. The Ruminant Farm Systems (RuFaS) modeling tool, developed by Cornell researchers and collaborators across academia, industry, government and nonprofits, is available at no cost for open-source collaboration. Cornell researchers created the scaffolding for the model and worked with collaborators to integrate Cornell and other dairy farm research on factors like animal feed, crop growth and milk production. The model predicts outcomes such as production costs, resource use and greenhouse gas emissions…
As highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) continues to spread globally, dedicated and openly shared research is essential. The Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) pursues several projects to protect animal and public health against HPAI. Scientists from CVM were among the first to detect the virus in North American wild and domestic birds and mammals through testing performed at the Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC). The first spillover to new mammal species was identified by a multidisciplinary team…
To satisfy the seafood needs of billions of people, offering them access to a more biodiverse array of fish creates opportunities to mix-and-match species to obtain better nutrition from smaller portions of fish. The right combination of certain species can provide up to 60% more nutrients than if someone ate the same quantity of even a highly nutritious species, according to a global analysis of fisheries published May 27 in Nature Sustainability. Wild fish harvests have stagnated for decades as many fisheries have been depleted by a growing global demand for seafood, which makes the need to maximize nutrition from limited fish stocks even more urgent…
Myanmar’s history of prolonged conflict has led to the forced displacement and resettlement of generations of refugees to the U.S., including upstate New York. Since relocating, these refugees’ relationship to fishing has likewise shifted, from angling for food and nutrition in rural regions of Myanmar to being a means for maintaining social connections, recreation, time outdoors and emotional well-being. Still, refugees in New York experience barriers to fishing, such as language disparities, lack of time, unfamiliar regulations and discrimination, described in a paper published in the June issue of Geoforum, released early online. The paper draws from interviews to examine the importance of access to environmental resources…
Fish and seafood can be a more environmentally friendly protein choice than other animal foods like beef, pork, and chicken. But you need to choose carefully. Not all fish are sustainable. And it’s more complicated than opting for certain species over others, because the sustainability and nutritional value of fish is affected by a host of factors. So, we asked the experts to school us in seafood. Here’s what they had to say…