My interest for agriculture and COVID-19 emotions as graduate student

Abstract

My name is Agustin Gonzalez Cruces, I am an agronomist, specialized in Agricultural Parasitology, and I graduated from the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo. My grandfather is a kind, sensitive, old-fashioned man with a firm hand. He is an example of perseverance and determination in the farming vocation. He pointed me towards my decision to study agronomy. In this teenage phase of my life, with the rebelliousness that characterizes that moment in life, he told me: ‘If you stay to study in Chapingo, I’ll leave you my lands and tech you the secrets of agriculture’. I remember that as being my initial motivation to enter that prestigious university. Love for the countryside was not an unknown feeling for me, since he always took us to work his fields, sometimes for weeding, irrigating, or other times for harvesting, with his typical saying: ‘To know how to order you have to know how to get things done’. I write “he took us” because my cousin, Ángel Campos, who happens to study the same career as I in the Universidad Agraria Antonio Narro, came along. Due to this, I dare to say it was my grandfather who turned us into men with a peculiar love for the countryside. After graduating I began setting up orchards for sale and giving technical consultation to farmers, including my grandfather, Mr. Bernardino Cruces, who has honestly been the most reluctant and stubborn farmer I have met, with his saying: ‘One thing is theory and another, very different thing is practice’, referring to his experience as a farmer and defending his empirical knowledge from being undermined. My grandfather was one of the first farmers to establish asparagus crops in the area of Atenco, State of Mexico, which is why I decided to specialize in that very kind and gentle plant. Whenever I’m immerse in its luscious foliage, it makes me think. I think about the way we plant, with all its stages and the goal of farming, which is to contribute to feeding society. I reflect upon the teachings of my grandfather, who has been my only fatherly figure. The COVID-19 pandemic meant a drastic change in my daily routine. When the infections began I became alert and got scared. I tried to tell my family what a virus was in the simplest way possible, because they did not understand the nature of the pathogen. I was about to finish my first term of my Master’s Degree in Phytopathology in the Colegio de Postgraduados, Campus Montecillo. I was restless, motivated and excited to take a lesson and learn from the best phytopathologists. Now, with video lessons, although the motivation to learn is still there, it isn’t the same. My way of learning is visual and practical, and I think video lessons do not fulfill my expectations. When I took a lesson on Agricultural Epidemiology with Dr. Gustavo Mora Aguilera, my vision of the pandemic changed. In his course, which was in-person, by the way, he told us about working on the psychology of fear, he encouraged us to face the pandemic with science, and would not let us freeze out of fear of getting infected, reaffirming the idea that the knowledge of the pathogen and its spread was the key to its prevention and management. That course broadened my perspective as a plant pathologist towards SARS-CoV-2. I understood that by taking the measurements to prevent contagion we could carry out certain activities to bring us closer to normality. I have not allowed the ongoing situation to interfere too much with my personal and emotional lives. I try to go about my daily routines, I haven’t stopped doing research or exercising, let alone going to the fields, always taking the adequate preventive measures. I trust that scientific progress with make the pandemic situation better. I have no fear of getting infected, although I do look after myself as much as possible so I don’t infect my mother or grandparents. History has marked us with similar pandemic situations, with unknown pathogens, and it is the knowledge of these that has helped us pull forward as a species. We know that a system in entropy always tends towards balance. My hope lies with producers, farmers and cattle breeders; that primary sector that fills me with pride and motivation, since they carry the most important responsibility on their shoulders: human nutrition.