How did you get interested in agriculture? And what are you hoping to gain from your apprenticeship?
May 2025
In the fall of 2024, I found myself in a basement classroom on a university campus that I’d graduated from 3 years prior. To justify commitment to unfulfilling employment with this institution, I’d made myself audit a course each semester. This semester, I’d selected a course taught by an environmental sociologist, mostly as a means of being able to improve my conversational capabilities with my partner. Unknown to me at the time, this course would challenge my thought patterns and alter how I move through the world. With the support of the fantastic instructor and an amazing cast of brilliant student minds, I explored what lies at the intersection of the following three questions:
- What brings me joy?
- What am I good at?
- What work needs to be done?
Perhaps it was my recently completed frontal lobe development, or the vulnerability of my fellow classmates, but for some reason pondering these questions as they relate to one another resulted in conclusions I’d never drawn before. Namely, my belief that not everyone is made to “change the world” was narrow-minded and not as freeing as I perceived. A life without impact or influence is one that lacks meaning, and by devaluing my contributions to my immediate community, I deprive myself of joy. I can use agentic work – a way of describing an individual’s natural abilities and instincts for work that both feel good for the individual and contribute to a goal – to increase positive impacts in my web of relationships. Agriculture was built on multi-species agentic work. A herding dog wants to herd and feels good when they do a good job. An agronomist wants to care for their land, crops, animals, and community and feels their best when they can do it well. Peace is derived from the work, not the absence of it.
As I move through my apprenticeship, I hope to get good at the skills required to do the work that needs to be done. Revitalization of food systems that function more harmoniously with our environment is essential. I hope to gain insights into how to utilize what nature already offers to produce nutrient-dense food. Developing relationships with both land and animals brings me joy and serves as a part of the solution to our broken food production process. I am eager to work with agronomists who know their land and livestock and practice creative thinking as they rise to meet the challenge of producing food in an already constrained system.