Hello! My name is Mackenzie Gunn, and I work as the Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Agent in Amelia County. I moved to Virginia in 2022 when I started this role, but grew up in Vermont, and have lived up and down the Eastern U.S. including New Hampshire, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and short stints in Greece and Puerto Rico!
I have always loved food – not just to eat, but the way it connects people across the table, cultures, and time.
I found myself leaning towards a career driven by food accessibility and sustainability, eventually leading me to agriculture. Growing up in New England as a “horse girl”, farms were all around me, but I was not really exposed to agriculture until my undergrad at the University of New Hampshire. I was studying Aquaculture and Ecogastronomy (agriculture through the lens of culture, economics, politics, and nutrition) and working on a small family run vegetable farm. I was learning all about small scale organic farming, and the villains across the US growing soybeans and corn by the thousands of acres, destroying our soils and the environment…
Fast forward 3 years, I moved down to Mississippi to do my Masters in aquaculture and am living out in the Mississippi Delta region. Along with the culture shock that came along with that, I find myself living in a field house surrounded by – you guessed it – those pesky soybean fields! 5,000 acres of them, to be exact. On one of my first days there the farming family invited us for a crawfish boil (another first for me!). After dinner we all sat around listening to the family talk about the farm, and I had this gut punch moment where I realized…wow, this is just a regular family trying to make a living farming this land, and they ALSO want this soil to be productive and healthy for generations. There are no “villains” in agriculture???
BOOM! One of those rare, but special, moments in life where a steadfast opinion is flipped on its head, and it changed my course from there on out. I wanted to learn more – what other parts of our agriculture system have I misjudged? I always thought I would work in aquaculture, but after completing my Masters’ I found myself drawn to Extension to be able to work directly with farmers, our food system, and connecting my community with agriculture. I love my job – I get to learn new things every day, work one on one with producers and community members, and have a direct impact supporting agriculture in Virginia.
I now live in Amelia County, Virginia with my husband, Conner, our dogs, cats, horses and snakes. We raise meat chickens, have laying hens and a flock of Katahdin sheep. I hope to play a small part in Virginia agriculture production on our small farm. I look forward to my time in VALOR to keep expanding my view of agriculture from all angles and develop my own leadership skills to keep growing and supporting our agriculture system, big and small!
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