A few weeks ago at residency, one of my professors, sustainability consultant Cynthia Scott, imparted to me that in the world of leadership training it is very common for people to focus on their own areas of weakness. However, she believes since life is short, improving "weak" competencies first is overwhelming and misses the point. Her belief is that instead it makes more sense to focus on core strengths and continue to build on those. ....

1. By Talia Eisenberg - Reclaiming
the Core Integrity of Age-Old
Agriculture (my MBA admissions
essay)
My personal travels have taken a distinctly more adventurous
agenda, and I have explored many developing countries in Africa
and South America to learn that the natural world of plants and
plant medicines offer many specific healing properties to
previously incurable diseases which Western science can’t quite
figure out. After immersing myself in the practices of tribal
communities from the West-Central African country, Gabon, or
the healing arts of the Shipibo tribes of Amazonian Peru, I have
come to passionately believe that for nearly every problem that
plagues the people of the “first world countries” there is a natural
solution that already exists yielding fruit from the earth, we just
have to avoid killing it and somehow find it. This takes
exploration, organization and the audacious hope and faith in a
brighter future for ourselves and for our planet.
Being from Nebraska, where farming is as common as Facebook,
where soybeans are still more popular than Snapchat, I have often
anxiously wondered about the family farmer’s fading connection
to the earth. My close friend from childhood is now a PhD
candidate in Psychology at the University of Chicago. We were
both vegetarians in middle school, partly to annoy others and

2. partly because of burgeoning environmental sensibilities. We were
each dedicated dietary deviant’s in Omaha. Beyond our friendship,
she now represents an important shift in personal values for a
growing number of our generation. She refuses to have any part of
her family’s massive livestock business because of how much
waste is produced, water is wasted and destruction it wreaks on
the earth and the bodies of the people who consume the burgers
that result from their mass production. We grew up with the
internet, and a proliferation of non-traditional sources of
information from a mushrooming network of global resources.
Our adolescence was punctuated with interests in holistic
treatments, alternative spiritual practices and often overlooked
views of the healing properties of plant medicines. We have
witnessed the growth of the natural foods and cosmetics markets
with excited curiosity and these trends have been the basis for
many conversations about entrepreneurial fantasies. My mind has
always gravitated towards the potential opportunities for the
development of plant-based medicinal innovation and the
possibilities of new products that might help heal the sick. I was
then and I still am fascinated by the intelligence beyond human
capabilities to cure physical and spiritual maladies. Science has
limits, in my opinion plant knowledge is infinite and naturally
solution-oriented. Have you heard of the scientific theory that
animals were conceived by plants long ago to move seeds around
as a solution to their inability to migrate across environments on
their own?
It’s becoming more apparent that the modern health care system
has fundamental flaws and some even regard it as a complete
failure. Instead of curing disease, the most common healing
technologies often serve as a “band aid” or leads to continuous
dependency with a heavy dose of side effects. The source or root
issue of the disease too often doesn’t get cured or even properly
diagnosed. Many of the sick and suffering have abandoned their
faith in their first world doctors and are travelling to place like the

3. Amazon to benefit from the practices and recommendations of
tribal shamans who combine spiritual practice with plant
medicines. While many of these people do, in fact, experience
symptomatic improvement these are all too often lost when they
return to the toxic environments of their modern home life.
Simultaneously, I am deeply troubled by the impact on indigenous
people by the proliferation of wireless access to the global internet
and the popularization of materialistic measures of modern
“success.” In my recent years of travel into the jungle of the
Amazon, I have personally seen how the cultural influences of the
industrialized countries are flowing fast into the minds of locals,
and I am distressed to see how their reverence for traditional
spiritual practices and their dedication to passing on personal
knowledge of plant medicines is being diluted, and becoming
increasingly more endangered.
In my home state of Nebraska, a reliable and deep relationship
with natural resources by family farmers has been nearly lost and
large corporate agricultural enterprises have all but taken over; the
family farm and the families themselves are now threatened by
increasingly unsustainable methods that put profit above purpose.
The overproduction of commercial crops has grown to become a
major cause of a climate in crisis and driven the mass
popularization of dietary dysfunction, while shareholder interests
have made it increasingly impossible for even the most dedicated
to make a living off the land. The ancient purpose of the role of the
farmer as provider of nourishment and the arbiter of access to the
wisdom of nature, has been eclipsed by market expansion and the
modern practices of mega-farming. When I talk to the farm
operations managers in my community, they describe the goal of
innovation in environmental sustainability in terms of increasing
yield while driving greater efficiency to achieve higher profits. Yet,
I firmly believe we live in a unique historical moment where the
next level of our common welfare depends on successfully

4. reclaiming the core integrity of age-old agriculture, while
incorporating the ancient principles of plant intelligence and
natural wisdom. Family farms are as much at risk of extinction as
the local shaman in Peru, the tribal doctor in Gabon, or far too
many other species that have a right to thrive on Earth; our job,
indeed my mission at PGS, should be to enable and empower the
next generation of entrepreneurs with breakthrough innovations
that sustains us all. While many students may define success of
their MBA studies as developing a great new app, I believe the
world does not need the next new Uber. I believe that we can
dedicate our research and develop the next “uber successful”
solution to the problematic misguided practices that are driving
the world to irreversible destruction.