Summer Centered: Callie Rabins ’25 Gets Hands-On With Organic Agriculture in Italy

As a political science major at Haverford with an interest in the intersection of politics, law, and agriculture, Callie Rabins ’25 has studied food deserts, agricultural labor unions, and how starvation is addressed by international law. But to better understand what agriculture looks like at the ground floor, she knew she would need to get her hands dirty.

This summer, Rabins is working at three different farms across Italy as part of a self-designed internship supported by the Center for Career and Professional Advising. Through Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, better known as WWOOF, she is getting practical, hands-on experience with organic agriculture that will complement her education in the classroom as she explores the way food and politics intersect to shape our lives.

Over the period of four weeks—as she moves from a farm near Reggio Emilia in northern Italy to another south of Florence and wraps up in the Foggia province—Rabins will help her host farms with their daily operations. So far, that’s meant harvesting fruits and vegetables for the market, weeding permaculture vegetable beds, and caring for chickens. At her third stop, at an olive orchard, she’ll learn about Mediterranean-specific olive farming and olive oil production. When she returns to her hometown outside of Boston later this summer, she’ll work for two weeks at a midsize community farm harvesting, planting and maintaining crops.

In a short time, she’s already learned that farming is far from a straightforward business.

“Each day brings new challenges and decisions to be made,” Rabins said. “I’m really fascinated by the need to be adaptive and responsive in the organic agriculture industry.”

Rabins is hoping to learn how to lean into the flexibility farming requires, so she can become a better leader, decision-maker and farmer, she said. On a day spent picking cherries at a farm near one of her hosts, as she settled into the rhythm of the work, she gained a deeper sense of how farmers decide how to manage their crops from planting to production.

While Rabins has worked at the farm near Boston in the past, she was eager to learn about farming in a country with a different climate and a different food culture than the United States. Her past research on the Slow Food movement and its origins near Rome made Italy an even more attractive destination.

Although she may not be likely to pursue a career directly focused on farming, Rabins is gaining practical experience that she can apply to work that deals with the political and governmental side of agriculture—for example, at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. She’s also developing skills that have nothing to do with farming, but everything to do with her future success.

“This summer is growing my confidence many times over,” Rabins said. “I feel like if I can plan, find, and physically labor through  a six-week-long patchwork-style internship [I created] myself, then I am capable of achieving any of my comparatively more straightforward academic and professional goals. Writing my senior thesis is feeling a lot less daunting right now.”

—Ben Seal