Elizabeth Higgins

Elizabeth (Liz) Higgins is a regional Ag Business Management/Production Economics Specialist with the Eastern NY Commercial Horticulture Program. In this role, she serves specialty crop farmers across a 17 county region in Eastern New York. Her focus is tree fruit, vegetable, berry, and grape farms. She also has an appointment with the Cornell Ag Workforce Development Program, providing training programs and extension outreach in human resource management on farms, with an emphasis on commercial fruit and vegetable farms. Within these roles her responsibilities include: providing individual consultation to growers in the region, and the development and delivery of training and education programs on farm management topics related to fruit and vegetable production and marketing. Her research and extension areas are broad but currently focus on:

• Cost/benefits of management changes in fruit and vegetable production
• Risk management and crop insurance
• Improving labor management
• CSA marketing

She has been with Cornell Cooperative Extension since 2006 and has served in a variety of roles both in and outside of agricultural production, including dairy, livestock and field crops production, family and consumer science, watershed management and natural resource management and forestry. She also has expertise in grants and financial support programs for agricultural producers and regularly serves as a grant reviewer for USDA programs. Liz has a MS in resource economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 

Liz and her family enjoy spending time outdoors in the Catskills, Adirondacks and Hudson Valley, and she has recently re-discovered sailing. She also serves annually as a volunteer tax preparer with the local United Way’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA).