Robin G. Brumfield

Professor Emeritus in Agriculture Economics

Robin Brumfield, Ph.D., was the Farm Management Extension Specialist at Rutgers from 1988 to 2023. She assembled the award-winning New Jersey Annie’s Project team in 2011. She collaborated with the team to conduct focus groups to adapt this program from the mid-west to conditions in an urban state. She has arranged the workshops so that the women complete a business plan as part of the workshop. Robin took the Annie’s Project concept to Antalya, Turkey in late 2011 where she co-founded Suzanne’s Project. She then extended the program to Germany, Spain, and Malta through an EU funded project called Empowering Women Farmers with Agricultural Business Management Training. She also trained small-holder women farmers in Nicaragua and Guyana to better manage their businesses. She is internationally known for her work in horticultural economics and has given over 200 talks in sixteen countries. Her Greenhouse Cost Accounting Program is the standard in the greenhouse industry. She uses tools like workbooks and computerized calculators to help farmers make better management decisions. Her on-line workbook, To Market; To Market was designed to help small beginning farmers decide what to produce and how to market it. Her Greenhouse Cost Accounting Program is the standard in the greenhouse industry. She wrote the marketing and business management chapters for the best-selling textbook, Greenhouse Operations and Management, by Dr. Paul V. Nelson. She was named a Fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science in 2012, the highest honor the society bestows.

Phone Number

610-349-7760

Email

Brumfiel@NJAES.rutgers.edu

A.J. Both

Professor and Extension Specialist

A.J. Both is a Professor and Extension Specialist in Controlled Environment Engineering in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. His research focuses on methods and systems that provide the optimum growing environment in protected plant production facilities and include topics such as hydroponics, supplemental lighting, crop modeling and the use of energy in agricultural systems. He teaches undergraduate and graduate classes at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. He serves as an associate/consulting editor for publications by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers and the American Society for Horticultural Science.

Phone Number

848-932-5730

Email

both@sebs.rutgers.edu

Melissa A. Bravo, M.S. Agronomy

Assistant Professor, County Agent III
Salem County, Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station

Melissa Bravo is the Agriculture Agent in Salem County. Her program focuses and research interests are related to foraging through the weeds of climate change regarding agronomic crops, logistics of diversification into a new farm business venue, and livestock herd health. She is a noxious and invasive vegetation management specialist, Certified Crop Advisor and Certified Pesticide Applicator of twenty years. She provides a variety of land use, crop, livestock, and pest management services to private, commercial, non-profit organizations and government landowners.

Phone Number

856-769-0090

Email

melissa.bravo@njaes.rutgers.edu

Madeline Flahive DiNardo

County Agent / Associate Professor
Rutgers Cooperative Extension in Union County

Madeline Flahive DiNardo is the County Agent / Associate Professor for Rutgers Cooperative Extension in Union County. Madeline has a MBA from the Rutgers Graduate School of Management. Madeline teaches the business related lectures for the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences undergraduate “Starting a Farm Business” course. As a county agent, she has provided training on starting and maintaining community vegetable gardens for local and school organizations.

Deborah Greenwood, Ph.D.

Assistant Teaching Professor

Deborah Greenwood is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. Her doctoral research focused on the urbanization and feminization of agriculture in the U.S. She examined the growth of urban communities around farms and the way that this change has influenced agricultural practices and demographics. Deborah identified the ways in which an increasingly urban context has encouraged the emergence of alternative forms of sustainable agriculture and changed the role of women in agriculture. She has been involved with Annie’s Project as a co-creator of the urban focused Annie’s Project – NJ program, Annie’s Project: Farming in New Jersey’s Cities and the Urban Fringe

Joseph R. Heckman, Ph.D.

Extension Specialist Soil Fertility

Joseph Heckman, Ph.D., Professor of Soil Science, Rutgers University teaches Soil Fertility, Organic Crop Production, and Graduate Seminar. He conducts research on optimizing nutrition for plant, animal, and human health and authored numerous publications on soil fertility and organic farming.

Phone Number

908-968-4990

Amy Rowe, Ph.D.

County Agent II (Associate Professor)
Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Cooperative Extension of Essex and Passaic Counties

Amy Rowe joined Rutgers in 2010 and is an Agriculture and Natural Resources County Agent for Essex and Passaic Counties. Amy earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers in Environmental Sciences. Her background is in water chemistry with a concentration on the fate and transport of contaminants. Amy has worked in stormwater management for more than 15 years and her outreach programming has focused on green infrastructure in urban environments, sustainability, and green jobs training programs. Recently, she has been working on food waste reduction and how it could lead to climate change mitigation. Amy also raises chickens, turkeys, and meat rabbits as sustainably as possible on her small farm.

Email

rowe@njaes.rutgers.edu

Richard W. VanVranken

Agriculture & Natural Resources County Agent I (Eqv. to Professor), County Extension Dept. Head
Cooperative Extension of Atlantic County, Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station

Office Location

6260 Old Harding Highway, Mays Landing, NJ 08330-1533

Phone Number

609-625-0056

Fax

609-625-3646

Email

vanvranken@njaes.rutgers.edu