Maria Teresa Tancredi

Biography

Maria Teresa is an international PhD student in Dr. Jennifer Jo Thompson’s Social Sustainability of Agrifood Systems Lab. A native from central Italy, Maria Teresa grew up on a small homestead farm, where she discovered her passion for the environment and agriculture. Maria Teresa received her B.S. in Environmental Sciences at the University of Padova (Italy). She then bridged her interests in environmental protection and food production by successfully pursuing a Dual M.S. in Sustainable Agriculture and Crop and Soil Sciences at the University of Padova (Italy) and the University of Georgia.

Research Interests

Maria Teresa’s research interests include learning about farmers' decision-making processes and understanding the factors motivating growers to adopt different practices. She aims to use this information to develop strategies to reduce agriculture’s negative impact on the environment. Maria Teresa also enjoys exploring the effects of policy on agriculture and food production to understand when and how policy could hinder the development of more sustainable and equitable systems. Maria Teresa strives to translate her knowledge into resources that policymakers can use to make informed decisions.

Current Projects

Her PhD research is part of the Precision Sustainable Agriculture (PSA) Project, a multi-state, interdisciplinary collaboration aiming to support successful cover crop adoption in commodity agriculture. Within PSA, Maria Teresa is part of the Social Science team, and her work focuses on identifying farmers’ mindsets influencing why, or why not, and how farmers are using cover crops (i.e., risk management, input reduction, sense of stewardship). She is also researching farmers’ experiences with incentive programs supporting the adoption of cover crops to identify their strengths and potential hurdles. Finally, she is collaborating with American Farmland Trust (AFT) to investigate the experiences and roles of women farmers.

Recent Work

During the 2024 spring semester, Maria Teresa led five online listening sessions with a total of 31 women farmers from the Northeast, South, and Midwest U.S. During those conversations, she investigated topics such as farm succession, the experiences women farmers have in agriculture, the impact of care duties on their role on the farm, and farmers’ opinions and experiences with policies and programs specifically targeting women producers.

Maria Teresa is leading this project as a collaboration with American Farmland Trust’s Women for the Land. In the summer of 2024, she will join the AFT Fellow Program and work on disseminating to the public what she learned from the listening sessions.