Kelly Hodgins

Kelly Hodgins is a farm-grown, small-town raised food-justice and agriculture advocate.This upbringing has afforded her the privilege to intimately understand how food is cultivated, marketed, processed, distributed, and ultimately consumed or wasted. Besides cultivating enormous respect for the actors across the entire food chain, this perspective has also allowed her to identify the flaws in today’s food system. Thus, in order to understand these issues afflicting agriculture and food systems, she took a step back from the farm to pursue graduate studies.The two largest issues to which she devotes her work are food waste and food justice. Her masters’ thesis (April 2015) investigates the lack of inclusion for low-income shoppers in alternative, sustainable food networks. She is also working with a major grocery chain to create landfill diversion plans for organic wastes in collaboration with local farmers. Previously, she has conducted independent research with migrant agriculture workers, and has researched in the field in Mexico and Cuba. Through her role as program coordinator at Feeding 9 Billion, she runs programming that supports undergraduate students become entrepreneurs in the food system. She is passionate about engaging the next generation.