Andrea Garfinkel

In her time as an agronomist and plant pathologist, Andrea Garfinkel has worked with a wide variety of crops, from sugar beets to hemp to peonies, but there’s a unifying thread.

“I just like plants, and I just like farmers, and I just like growing,” Garfinkel said — including the challenges that come with cultivating crops.

“... I really, truly believe it’s one of the hardest jobs out there,” she said, “and anything that I can do to make a difference, and make that job just a little bit easier, is super meaningful for me.”

Garfinkel is specifically looking to make a difference in the Big Horn Basin, as she started this week as the new director of the University of Wyoming’s Powell Research and Extension Center.

The center and its personnel conduct research aimed at benefiting growers in Park, Big Horn, Washakie, Hot Springs and Fremont counties and beyond. That includes running experiments on weed control, plant varieties, alternative crops and herbicide treatments at the 220-acre facility north of Powell.

Garfinkel specializes in plant pathology — studying diseases that impact agricultural crops — and holds specific expertise in those caused by fungi. Her work has included identifying diseases affecting crop yield and coming up with ways to manage them.

She’s already interested in learning more about ergot’s impacts on local barley and grass seed, the cercospora that pops in sugar beets around Worland and white mold that may be starting to become a concern for the region’s bean growers. But before Garfinkel does anything, she wants to hear what’s on the minds of the area’s growers.

“That’s my vision, is to understand how we can be the best service provider possible,” she said. “And the only way that we can do that, in my mind, is first sit down, have a conversation, listen to what people need ...”

Homecoming

Garfinkel grew up in Colorado, but has spent most of her adult life in Wyoming.

“I bleed brown and gold, for sure,” she said.

It was the University of Wyoming that initially pulled her north. Although her bachelor’s degree was in international studies, it was an undergraduate ag class that really captured her interest.

“Agriculture was a place that I saw myself,” Garfinkel recalled.

She decided to change course, going on to obtain a master’s in agronomy/horticulture from UW and then a doctorate in plant pathology/phytopathology from Washington State University.

Her work at UW included cultivating decorative sunflowers; in Washington, she worked at a research and extension center in the western part of the state and researched peonies.

After that, Garfinkel helped detect pathogens in tropical forests in the U.S. Pacific Islands, worked with grapes and almonds in Chile and blueberries and hemp in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Most recently, she worked as a senior scientist at Plenty — a Laramie-based vertical farming startup. 

During her year-and-a-half at the company, Garfinkel monitored for, diagnosed and managed diseases at two of the world’s largest indoor farms: one outside of Los Angeles that produced leafy greens and another in Virginia that produces strawberries.

“Part of my job was going to these farms, talking with the growers, understanding their problems and helping them manage the farm,” she said. “It was very similar to other sort of extension and outreach activities that I’ve performed; it’s just that it was in a warehouse instead of a field.”

There’s sometimes a perception inside the tech industry that they’re “doing something other than farming,” Garfinkel said, but “they’re trying to do something that farmers are already really, really good at doing.”

The work in Powell won’t be foreign to her, as she started out her career in ag working with row crops like potatoes, sugar beets and wheat. And she’s looking forward to coming back to outdoor ag, “because I think that ultimately, these are just plants, right? And we’re trying to get plants to work for us,” she said.

‘Reach out and talk to us’

Garfinkel is also looking forward to the unique learning opportunities offered at the Powell center and in the Big Horn Basin. 

While she’s enjoyed living in Laramie, Garfinkel said she’s also missed living in an agricultural area, which makes this diverse, ag-focused community exciting on both a professional and personal level.

“The things that are really exciting to me about Powell [are] the opportunities … to really access the community and grow the station,” she added.

Coming into the job in the middle of the growing season, Garfinkel wants to connect with local farmers to hear and see what issues they’re currently facing; she might collect samples of diseased plants, perform some diagnostics and maybe even offer some management recommendations.

But her initial goal is “engagement and listening.” Garfinkel said she hopes people feel like they can reach out and talk to the center’s personnel.

“I would like to invite people to see the research station as a resource for them,” she said, “and somewhere where they can come and really access us and our ears.”

Contact the center by emailing uwprec@uwyo.edu, calling 307-754-2223 or stopping by 747 Road 9.