Monika Roth: Organically growing the agricultural community

It is clear that our newest Hometown Hero, Monika Roth, has a somewhat loose definition of retirement.

She “retired” officially from her position as agriculture and horticulture program leader for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County in 2018.

“I kept working for two years until 2020, then transitioned into retirement,” Roth said.

In 2021, this champion of local farmers became president of the newly formed Friends of the Ithaca Farmers Market, a nonprofit founded to ensure the future viability and enhance the community impact of the Ithaca Farmers Market (IFM) at Steamboat Landing.

“Certainly her skill set is uniquely suited to that position,” said Jan Rhodes Norman, owner of IFM vendor Silk Oak and current IFM Board of Directors president. “She brings all of this breadth of knowledge to it. But then I sometimes want to say, ‘Oh, my dear, I don’t think you thought retirement would look like this!’ And it’s our gain that in retirement she has actually shouldered as much as she has.”

Roth has served as an advisor to the IFM for more than 40 years and assisted in obtaining funding for the construction of the Steamboat Landing pavilion in the late ’80s.

“We’ve worked together for decades,” Norman said of Roth. “I’ve always considered her the mother of the current market pavilion because she wrote the grant for the funding we got to build the pavilion all those decades ago.”

Roth moved to Ithaca in 1973, and her first job at Cornell University was in plant pathology. That led to a long career working at the Cornell Cooperative Extension.

“I was the third woman in the system in the agricultural field in 1980,” Roth said of her position in the cooperative extension, where she built many programs from the ground up that still exist today. These include Master Gardeners, a group of volunteers that assist the extension to provide educational horticulture programs for the public, and Master Composters, a group of volunteers trained to educate the public about, and instill enthusiasm for, composting.

The Master Gardeners Spring Garden Fair and Plant Sale, held every year since 1982, was also spearheaded by Roth and remains a thriving event today.

She started the Citizen Pruners program, which provides volunteers with the opportunity to help maintain street trees and shrubs in the city of Ithaca.

Roth also helped spearhead the creation of the Ithaca Children’s Garden (ICG) with Harriet Becker and Mary Alyce Kobler and witnessed firsthand the planning for and laborious construction of Gaia, the garden’s giant snapping turtle sculpture, which was “hatched” in 2005.

ICG has been honoring the whole child and fostering environmental stewardship since 1999. 

“The nice thing about these programs is they all existed and flourished in the time that I started them, but then they all continued,” Roth said. “What I think I was good at doing was finding the resources to make something happen. It wasn’t always me alone but working with others to support an initiative.”

Jennifer Wilkins, member of the board of the Friends of the Ithaca Farmers Market, met Roth when she relocated to Ithaca in 1993.

“I admire that [Roth] works so tirelessly to improve the local food system and to make it more accessible to all members of the community and more viable to more local growers,” Wilkins said.

Roth has also been instrumental in developing the now-thriving Trumansburg Farmers Market.

“She has enriched the lives of all of us in Tompkins and surrounding counties in many ways,” said Trumansburg resident and fellow Hometown Hero Alan Vogel, who nominated Roth for the honor.

In her retirement, Roth has tackled a number of projects.

“What I’ve been doing since retirement is basically following up on things I never got around to completely,” Roth said. “I felt like I left unfinished business and wanted to keep addressing the needs in our community regarding agriculture.”

The Friends of the Ithaca Farmers Market was one of those situations, she said, and she was happy to help form the organization.

“Our role is really to try to expand the community benefits of the market,” Roth said. The group also encourages small business and ensures that the market continues to serve as a space where customers can learn about food and local agriculture and crafts.

Securing funding for a renovation of the Steamboat Landing site is one of Roth’s current projects.

“The roof is looking pretty shabby,” Roth said. “The parking lot is looking pretty shabby.”

She is helping with a capital campaign to fund improvements to the parking lot. The farmers market received a grant that will cover 85% of the cost of the parking lot, Roth said, but the market still needs to raise the remaining $1.2 million to match the project.

“So far we’ve raised only $250,000, so we have a ways to go,” Roth said.

Aside from her efforts with the IFM, Roth is also working on an agriculture plan for the town of Caroline.

“It’s been fun,” she said. “I love being able to work at a community level and being able to translate what everyone is saying into some actions.” The project is certainly in her area of expertise; she wrote the agriculture plans for Tompkins County, Dryden and Lansing, and assisted in the plans for Ulysses and the town of Ithaca.

One other current project at its beginning stages is the construction of a shared commercial kitchen incubator. Currently a feasibility study is underway with an eye toward leasing the former Buffalo Street Greenstar space (called “The Space”) next to where Ren’s Mart is currently located.

“It’s been on our radar as something we’ve needed in our community for years,” Roth said of the incubator.

With so many ideas and an endless network of people eager to work alongside her, Roth continues to make a difference in her community.

“She is probably one of the most dedicated people I’ve worked with,” said Erica Frenay, owner of Shelterbelt Farm in Caroline and chair of the Town of Caroline Agriculture Committee. “Weekends, evenings, she’s always working. She doesn’t always like being in the spotlight; she prefers being the worker bee in the background — but she knows everyone around.”

Tompkins Weekly’s Hometown Heroes Award is sponsored by Security Mutual Insurance and Canopy by Hilton Ithaca.