Hello and welcome back to the Community Ag Project Podcast. In season 2 episode 7, we sit down with Yolanda Gonzalez, “an Urban Agricultural Specialist with the Harvest NY program. In this role, she provides technical assistance and educational programming for urban farmers and gardeners across the five boroughs of New York City.”

Yolanda has been in this role for 7 years, so I ask her some questions about her journey! In our conversation, we talk about what the agriculture extension does, who is serves, and what, more specifically, the agriculture community is like in NYC.

We also discuss her current initiatives, including CRAFT, the Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training. We also talk about available online urban agriculture programming, and Yolanda’s ongoing Community Mushroom Educator project.

We later touch on NYC soil classification, city soil lead contamination, and experiments with growing ginger.

To learn more about Yolanda and her work, check out her instagram @the_agrotourista and the @urbanag.nyc page.

Here is an expanded profile on Yolanda and some other links that she mentions throughout the episode:

https://cals.cornell.edu/yolanda-gonzalez

Community mushroom educator:

https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/projects/mushrooms/

CRAFT program:

https://craftfarmapprentice.com

Cornell cooperative extension page:

https://harvestny.cce.cornell.edu

Map of NYC ag:

https://mapnyc.herokuapp.com

Thanks for tuning in and be sure to check out the remainder of season 2.