About
As a Ph.D. student in Development Studies at Cornell University, Mai Ichihara is interested in how an outcomes-based food production system centered on soil health will impact local rural livelihoods and globalized food economies. Through her research, she hopes to understand the ongoing evolution of the regenerative agriculture movement, the tensions within it, and its entangled trajectory with emerging market incentives and regulations for climate and nature. Her research will focus on small-scale farming and their resilience and vulnerability to these institutional dynamics being shaped by nature-based metrics, markets, and governance structures.
Mai earned her concurrent M.A. in global affairs and MEM in water resource science and management from Yale University, and her B.A. in international affairs from George Washington University. Prior to Cornell, she managed a food and agriculture program for companies seeking to make verifiable commitments to address their land use impacts and support farmers restoring soil health. In this role, she also helped build collaborations with companies, processors, growers, retailers, and other public-private partners to motivate systems change across supply chains nationally and internationally. She has a diverse professional experience within the environmental and social impact sectors, including policy advocacy, journalism, scientific research, and monitoring and evaluation. Mai aims to serve as a scholar-practitioner who can think critically, creatively, and ethically for developing community-centered approaches to rural prosperity and agroecology.
Interests
Agroecology and rural livelihood
Applied and participatory research
Science-based metrics and markets for food system sustainability
