I stopped following politics after Trump got elected again. In 2020, I thought I was a part of a movement where everyone was growing in conscious. With every day a new headline, a new crime, a new impeachable offense, the country could clearly see the damage he dealt domestic and abroad. After 2021 there was quiet, and I thought we liked it that way. I thought I was part of a growing movement, but I wasn’t. I was terminally online, and I was out of touch. 

I stopped reading the news because the one way I thought real change could happen would not come. I thought great change must come from laws, government departments, political advocacy, and more radicals in government. But that got us the same old fascist, DOGE, and insert any other upheaval I’m not reading about. I couldn’t stay online.

This summer I touched grass, and I mean really touched grass, in a way I never had before. I did so by working on a farm.

I did research at Olin under Alessandra, and she asked a simple, yet challenging question for me to explore: what economic and ecological incentives align for farmers? After a bit of googling, one of the answers to this question is the concept of “regenerative agriculture”, a series of strategies that prioritize revitalizing the land and capturing carbon through farming practices. Broader research points to a variety of successful, well tested strategies for farms to implement, alongside being far more profitable in the long run. Now, the follow up question becomes: How can I contribute to enabling farmers to implement regenerative agriculture?

The answers to this new question are diverse, fascinating, and complicated, but one discovery was clear to me. The government could never “legally mandate regenerative agriculture”. Farms are too diverse for blanket standards, and guidelines are frequently unable to encompass the farmers they supervise. My aforementioned theory of change could not succeed under these conditions. This developed my first new understanding: Systemic change must be designed to empower its users at a granular level, and these systems do not need to be government supported.

The farming community in Massachusetts is beautiful and diverse, and every farmer is supported by relying on one another to teach and grow together. I saw farmers that depended on networks of mutual aid, and I could see how successful this strategy was. Farms hosted events to share how they found success, and how that impacted their perspectives about the industry. Systemic change must be enforced through a community’s dependence on their peers, not their dependence on authority figures. Farmers change their behavior through close community mentorship, and it is difficult for politicians, academics, or engineers to meaningfully contribute to a farmer’s operations.

My final project became a guidebook for farmers to compare success stories related to regenerative farming. It took the summer of engrossing myself in a new ecosystem, questioning my biases as an engineer, and exploring how I can support a community that already relies on an established system of aid. 

I want to farm more. Not just because the community is so welcoming, not just because the work is tangible and rewarding, but because farming makes me believe that change is still possible. What I learned might not resonate with you. But there are other ways to change the world that you may not be thinking about. I implore you to seek out these means of change and discover the greatest contributions you can provide. Your current theory of change does not encompass every impact one can make in this world. And if you’re like me, then you know your capacity to give is greater than support for movements that don’t feel successful. You deserve to discover how.