Seed Anonymous

The summer before my junior year, I watched my grandparents working on the far side of the lawn, shoveling compost and mounds of grayish soil over freshly seeded patches. It was a strangely perceptive moment: glistening beads of sweat ran over their wrinkled, experienced hands, seeping into creases filled with grit and soil. Having spent my teenage years living in the city, I was never able to fathom why my grandparents continued farming when they could buy everything they needed at the local store, just a short drive away. I thought their gardening a little odd, but gave it no further attention. I had other things on my mind.

That summer, all of my waking thoughts were consumed by the Young Entrepreneurship Challenge, in which a team of students and I were tasked with formulating a comprehensive business plan for an African agricultural company planning to penetrate the national market. After wrestling with a variety of concepts and weeding out foreseeable flaws and risks, I was left with a charming model. By engineering a social media campaign enabling citizens to discover more about foreign cultures, our venture could effectively promote African produce. Certain of my idea's success, I persuaded teammates to adopt it; but,...