Krishna's Blog

Blog Post 1: My incredible Stanford Farm experience

The Stanford sustainable agriculture internship is a wonderful learning experience that has been unlike anything that I had imagined. In my junior year, I studied AP Environmental Science and realized that this is the ‘science of the future.’ Today, environmental science is becoming more important on a global scale. One recent scientific study suggests that by 2040, the world may face a severe food crisis as food production falls far below consumption. To make things worse, at least 30% of the food grown in the United States (more than 100 billion pounds) is wasted instead of composted. While many people in the U.S. throw away food, millions around the world are starving. The climate change is causing severe weather such as droughts, earthquakes and hurricanes. With all of these staggering global challenges, sustainable agriculture is becoming a very prominent field, especially in California where we are experiencing a severe drought. It is of great importance that today’s youth learn about the importance and mechanics of sustainable agriculture, or we will not be able to solve the challenges posed by climate change and global warming.

Over the past two weeks, my fellow interns and I have participated in various farm jobs and learned where the food on our table actually comes from. We have sorted seeds, pulled weeds out of three different farm fields, learned how to make and transport compost, and even learned how a combine harvester works. Each job showed us how agriculture can be made more sustainable. For example, the drought resistant variety of wheat grown at Stanford Farm requires almost no water and can withstand hot weather.

I was most interested in learning more about the composting process since I did not know much about it. Our team gained plenty of experience shoveling and preparing compost. We even had to shovel horse manure from the Red Barn horse center into wheelbarrows and dump it in the compost pile! I know that weeding is critical to the cultivation of useful plants. We enjoyed planting activities and building an irrigation system for our vegetable garden, amongst many other things. Although the farm tasks involve hard physical labor, the work is very enjoyable. The highlight of the farm experience so far has been learning about the combine harvester, a machine that harvests, threshes and winnows wheat in one operation. The combine makes a highly tedious job into a very simple operation that is a pleasure to watch. Click the following link for a short video of a combine harvester in operation at Stanford Farms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdaewyaC3p4&feature=em-upload_owner

Finally, the internship also includes fun activities such as a trip to the famous Hoover Tower last week. The view there was amazing as we could see the whole Stanford campus and beyond. Field trips make the Stanford experience even more enjoyable as interns get to interact with earth science professors and learn interesting facts about SF Bay. We visited the Marin Headlands, north of San Francisco today and learned the local geography. We also examined rock formations and learned that geologists can infer what happened millions of years ago by examining rock patterns and fossils.

Blog Post 2

At the Farm: Our engaging work on the Stanford farm continues. Every day, we learn something new about sustainable agriculture. We are currently designing an experiment to study different types of potting soil. We plan to present our results at AGU, a conference for geoscientists later this fall. Lately, we learned to make handheld sieves by drilling holes into plastic trays. These devices are helpful to sort seeds or produce potting quality soil. We have also become experts in harvesting vegetables on the farm. The veggies we harvest are sent to the Stanford Cafeteria for serving the students. On very hot days, we spend our time on computers at the Y2E2 Earth Sciences office, which is about 20-min walk from the farm. We are currently generating ‘plant profiles’ which would be used to instruct the Stanford farm class next year. My teammate Johnny and I started our work with Pink Banana Squash, a variety of squash that we planted on the farm

Erin, our supervisor demonstrates

Planting day at the Farm

At the Hopkins Marine Station: Last Wednesday, we visited one of Stanford’s marine laboratories, the Hopkins Marine Station, located next to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It took about 1.5 hours by shuttle to reach Hopkins, but it was a beautiful and scenic drive. I was excited to visit the Hopkins marine station, since we would get the chance to explore the rocky shoreline and study sea life in the tide pools. We identified sea animals like mollusks, barnacles and crabs using a marine guidebook. The marine station staff gave us a tour of the science labs, where we learned the basics of developmental biology of marine life. In addition, we got the opportunity to observe and touch marine life such as sea stars, sea cucumbers and mollusks. One of the marine station staff members put together a list of career and internship opportunities at http://hopkins.stanford.edu/careers.htm for those of us interested in marine biology.

Me at the Tide pools, Hopkins Marine Station

Jenny looks on during a lab instruction

A sea urchin (left) and brittle star (right)

Today was an exciting day as we got to listen to graduate talks on Carbon Capture and Storage and Argon dating rocks in the earth’s mantle. I am personally interested in Carbon capture as it presents an innovative solution to utilize excess carbon emissions and help mitigate the effects of global warming.

Blog Post 3

I can’t believe that the 2015 Stanford Earth Sciences internship is over, and I am writing my final blog entry! The past eight weeks of summer have gone by in a flash, but the Stanford internship program will remain in my memory forever.

The highlight of the final weeks was submitting the abstract of our soil mixture experiment to the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The objective of our experiment was to determine the ratio of compost to potting mix that would be most economical and productive. We combined the compost we prepared on the farm with potting mix to create different soil mixtures. We created five different ratios: (1) 100% compost; (2) 75% compost and 25% potting mix; (3) 50% compost and 50% potting mix; (4) 25% compost and 75% potting mix; and (5) 100% potting mix. We then planted three different species of crops: an Indonesian cultivar of Cosmos flowers (Cosmos sp.), a heritage American Corn cultivar (Zea mays), and Ojo de Cabra beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). Our experimental data indicated that 75% compost and 25% potting mix was the most favorable ratio, since the corn, bean, and cosmos plants grown had the highest germination rate (90% of corn seeds, 90% of bean seeds, and 100% of cosmos seeds) and the highest growth. From the data we took on August 3, 2015, the corn plants grown using the 75:25 compost to potting mix ratio were taller by an average of 10.67cm, the beans grown under the same conditions were taller by an average of 3.96cm, and the cosmos plants were taller by an average of 0.14 cm.

In the last week of the program, we hosted a farm tour for the benefit of the rest of the Earth Sciences interns. I had the privilege of introducing our experiment to our guests while conducting the tour of the farm greenhouse. This was an incredible experience as it reminded me of how lucky I was to work on this beautiful farm with its vast fields. Finally, we farm interns got the opportunity to tour the labs where our fellow interns have been working all summer! Touring the labs further broadened my knowledge of earth science. For instance, I never knew that fossilized cores could be examined to study earth’s past climactic conditions.

I enjoyed the Stanford earth sciences internship and wish that I could ‘relive’ my whole experience. The internship not only taught me a great deal about where our food comes from, but also gave me valuable work experience. I would recommend this program to anyone who cares about our Earth and wants to learn how to be an earth scientist. The Stanford Earth Sciences internship is a remarkable program for passionate learners!