Many students seeking careers in agriculture grew up on or near a farm, but for Evyn Appel, a senior honors sustainable food systems major and the 2025 convocation speaker for the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, an interest in food systems grew while living in Center City Philadelphia. 

“Growing up, I was surrounded by fantastic restaurants and a lot of international flavors and all the great things that come with that,” said Appel, a Eugene du Pont Scholar. “But I was also surrounded by a lot of problems that were the product of our food system and its lack of access and affordability.”

Appel felt like she was missing a piece of the problem with the food system. She saw the result — food insecurity — but not the fundamental issues causing it. 

To find the issues, Appel pursued policy-focused internships. She also got involved with emergency food program research, a teaching assistantship for UD’s New Zealand study abroad program in sustainable agriculture, and UD’s Hydroponics Club. 

Last year, Appel interned with the Food Research and Action Center in Washington, D.C., diving into school meal policies and the summer food service programs. She is now interns with the National Farm to School Network, a nationwide movement centered on getting local foods into school meals, educating students about where their food comes from and careers in agriculture. 

“It's really about making connections [to the food system],” Appel said. “There were no obvious connections to farms where I grew up, but there were small outlets through farmers markets or local apples in school meals, where you could make those connections.” 

Communicating to others about where their food comes from and what their food system looks like motivates Appel to continue learning about sustainable food systems. 

“Studying agriculture made me realize how many more connections need to be made,” Appel said. “I’m looking at a lot of policies at the state and federal level that create connections and figuring out what’s really working, what’s reaching students and what some states are doing that others can replicate.” 

Following this desire to explore how social policy can impact the food system, Appel conducted research on food insecurity with her research advisor, Allison Karpyn, the co-director of the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) and professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences. 

“We’re looking at the stigma in the emergency food system, such as food banks and food pantries, and how stigma serves as a huge barrier that makes the experience of seeking eligible resources a lot harder,” Karpyn said.

According to Karpyn, researchers first studied stigma during the HIV pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s, when uncertainty about transmission fueled fear. 

“Stigma is socially manifested, and we see it emerge in specific ways, whether it be through structures and policies, or through the way that someone directly treats someone buying groceries or receiving food,” she said.

Appel and a team of UD students, staff and faculty interviewed food pantry clients, staff and volunteers while reviewing research on stigma to investigate how, or if, federal nutrition assistance and emergency food programs are working to combat stigma. 

“We are trying to find if [stigma] is something [food pantries] are talking about or actively working on,” Appel said. “Then on the client side, what it is actually like for them, if clients have ever experienced discrimination or felt judged, or too embarrassed to tell family members.” 

On top of her internships and extensive research experiences, Appel’s time as a student, and later a teaching assistant, on the New Zealand study abroad trip shed light on a different perspective. 

“Farmers in New Zealand use what they have, and what they have is heavily dependent on the climate and the rain,” Appel said. “They may be livestock farmers, but they identified more with being grass farmers because it’s a very pasture-based system. Letting the plants dictate what happens, rather than the animals, was a really different perspective.” 

Appel explained that even though some of the agricultural practices in New Zealand would not be applicable on a larger scale in countries like the United States, there are still ways to implement some of the more sustainable practices. 

“It’s tempting to say that things are so much better for New Zealand’s environment and economy because they don’t have agricultural subsidies,” Appel said. “I wouldn’t say that America could just do that, but it does definitely force you to think about not accepting the status quo and continuing to do things just because that’s the way they’ve always been done.” 

Appel also founded the UD Hydroponics Club out of her interest in finding adaptable and accessible ways for people in areas that can’t easily or traditionally grow things to grow their own food. 

“The club is such a roller coaster. When things are growing, it’s all so beautiful and so fresh,” said Appel, the club’s president. “We’re selling to restaurants; we’re making hydroponic at-home pickle kits and selling out at Ag Day. But then there’s the lows of nothing germinating, everything is dying and the towers in the dining hall have been running dry for weeks.”

“It’s definitely taught me a ton about the viability of hydroponics as a solution, the difficulties of running a completely volunteer-based club that still has to care for living things and a lot of entrepreneurial skills, too,” Appel said.

Appel hopes to continue to bring innovative and more sustainable solutions to the current food system, using the foundational knowledge that UD’s sustainable food systems major has provided her. 

“One of the farmers in New Zealand said to us, ‘If you do things the way they’ve always been done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten,’” Appel said. “So, if we are criticizing how the American food system is, then something needs to change about how we do it if we want a different result.”