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Cornell University

Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition

Kiera Crowley


Kiera Crowley is a PhD student in the field of soil and crop sciences and a FLAS fellow studying Hindi. Kiera is interested in innovation diffusion and the adoption of conservation agriculture technologies among farmers in India’s Indo-Gangetic Plain. She is passionate about rebuilding degraded soils and improving soil health because she sees healthier soils as the key to improving farmers’ livelihoods and guaranteeing food and nutrition security for future generations. Her advisor is TCI Faculty Fellow Andrew McDonald. Before becoming a TCI scholar, Kiera spent three years as a research support specialist at TCI. During that time, she co-wrote and created maps and figures for the Institute’s report on Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition in India 2020. Kiera received her master’s degree in agronomy from Cornell. For her master’s research, she conducted a field experiment comparing the effects of different cover crop management strategies on soil health, weed suppression, crop yield, and profitability. She speaks Chinese and spent a year in China on a Fulbright Scholarship researching the development of organic agriculture.