Long Island Farm Leverages Cornell Research To Adapt, Expand

May 20, 2026

By Jacob Pucci

In 1985, Ed Harbes III grew a bumper crop of potatoes. The problem was, so did other farmers.

Potato prices plummeted. It cost Harbes about $4 to grow 100 pounds of potatoes; the market paid just $2. He worked 100-hour weeks during the growing season and trucked potatoes from Long Island to Maine in the offseason.

“We knew then that we had to find an alternative,” said Harbes, a 12th-generation farmer on Long Island’s North Fork.

To complicate matters, around that time, his father retired, and Harbes took over managing his family’s potato farms in Huntington and Mattituck.

Ralph Freeman, a longtime floriculture extension specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Suffolk County, encouraged Harbes to expand into flowers and other bedding plants that would be more profitable. Harbes also began transitioning the farm’s focus from wholesale to retail, and Cornell’s guidance helped the farm gradually shift from cabbage and potatoes to pumpkins, sweet corn, stone fruit, apples and other crops to increase and diversify their revenue streams

“Cornell’s prime directive was to help people in agriculture get out to a good start,” Harbes said.

Decades later, Harbes Farm continues to rely on a mutually beneficial collaboration with Cornell researchers. That collaboration has made the Harbes family’s three farms, totaling 300 acres, fall destinations known throughout Long Island for its pumpkin and apple picking and one of the biggest names in Long Island agritourism.

Source : cornell.edu

Video: Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes | Field Talk Friday

Field Talk Friday | Dr. John Murphy | Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes

Most of us spend our time managing what we can see above ground—plant height, leaf color, stand counts, and yield potential. But the deeper you dig into agronomy, the more you realize that some of the most important processes driving crop performance are happening just millimeters below the surface.

In this episode of Field Talk Friday, Dr. John Murphy continues the soil biology series by diving into one of the most fascinating topics in modern agronomy: root exudates and the role they play in shaping the microbial world around plant roots.

Roots are not passive structures simply pulling nutrients out of the soil. They are active participants in the underground ecosystem. Plants constantly release compounds into the soil—sugars, amino acids, organic acids, and other molecules—that act as both energy sources and signals for soil microbes.