I took this photo at the end of a long day in the field. My hand was covered in soil, my shirt soaked from the heat, and my head was filled with data points we had just collected under the almond trees. This was following my time as a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Davis. I finished my doctorate in 2014, but I still remember those long field days. We were measuring everything from canopy growth and leaf nutrient content to greenhouse gas emissions and yield. I thought we were closing in on the formula for more sustainable yields. If we could just collect enough data, we could finally explain the system.
That was the theory. But as the season progressed, the results started to tell a different story.
Some of the experiments we expected to do well underperformed. Others, with less attention or different practices, produced more than we thought possible. The statistics gave us correlations. The trends made sense on paper. But when it came to the final outcome, we were still surprised.
At first, that was frustrating. We had done the work. We had followed the plan. We had expected the outcome to match the effort. But agriculture doesn’t always work that way. So many factors are out of your control. Timing. Inputs. Weather. Market forces. Even farm decisions made years earlier. And the further I went in the research, the more I began to understand something that no textbook had taught me.
You can do everything right and still not get the result you expected. I took this photo of my hand to remind myself what the work looks like. Not the clean version in a journal article or presentation. The real version. Dirt under your nails. Muscles sore. Mind tired. A quiet, personal moment of wondering whether all this effort is worth it. The photo is about reflection.
For years I believed success in agriculture meant delivering results. The data. The harvest. The significant effect. And those things do matter. But what I have come to believe even more deeply is that how you go about getting those results matters just as much.
Because if we teach people to put their heads down and push through without a sense of the why, what kind of culture are we creating?
One that rewards survival over purpose?
One that waits for people to burn out before they earn a voice?
One that says effort counts only if it leads to results on a spreadsheet?
We need to cultivate a different approach.
What This Taught Me
The lesson that stuck with me from those orchard experiments is not about a specific variable or treatment. It is about alignment. Between your actions and your values. Between what you measure and what you care about. Between the land and the people who steward it.
Agriculture is more than extracting results. It is about building something resilient. Something honest. Something that others can be part of. The outcome may not always be guaranteed. But the way you show up, the care you give, and the people you invite in, those are choices you can make every single day.
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
What keeps you going when the outcome isn’t guaranteed?
I’d love to hear from you. Join the conversation on LinkedIn.
