It’s been one year since Anna Wallingford got an email in the middle of the night, telling her she’d been fired from her job as a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
She moved back home to New Hampshire. Then, in another late-night email, she learned she had been fired illegally and was required back in Washington, D.C.
She returned to her empty apartment. On a Monday morning she reported to her lab, but without federal support there wasn’t much she could work on.
“We couldn’t buy anything. We couldn’t hire anybody,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything. Everybody was miserable.”
Wallingford found herself in the center of several massive downsizing efforts by the Trump Administration, which has led to tens of thousands of federal workers leaving their posts. Since last January, thousands of research grants have been terminated or frozen and the U.S. government has lost over 10,000 people with PhDs in science, technology, engineering and math.
After evaluating the situation in her lab, Wallingford resigned from the USDA, responding to one of the so-called “fork in the road” emails that circulated last spring.
Then, she returned to New Hampshire again, where she decided she would take on a new challenge: building an organization from scratch that would allow her to do research on her own.
Community-supported research
Wallingford calls her new project “New Hampshire Community Supported Research.” She says her goal is to “democratize agricultural research” by getting farmers and gardeners to participate more in the scientific process."
An entomologist by training, Wallingford is focused on bugs – and ways to deal with their effects on food crops while minimizing pesticides, a practice called “integrated pest management.” She’s hoping to be a resource for farmers who are trying to grow food in a way that enhances the health of the environment – something many small New England operations are bearing in mind as consumers become more conscious of their options.
Right now, she’s conducting field studies on land she’s renting from the University of New Hampshire and pitching research ideas to farmers and other growers.
People can rank their interest in various ideas, like a study investigating whether bugs might be tricked into laying eggs on bean plants if they are sprayed with kale juice, or a test of home-remedy pesticides and their potential dangers for beneficial insects. One idea involves whether peanut crops can be turned into something known to scientists as a “party zone” – controlling the behavior of tarnished plant buds and cucumber beetles.
Wallingford is applying for grants, and she’s still trying to figure out who might be interested in supporting her work.
“My hope is that maybe this time next year, I'll have a big pot of money and I can actually have the community vote on it,” she said. “I don't have that community yet. Or that big pot of money.”
From federal paychecks to a Patreon account
Wallingford says her transition has been awkward at times.
“There is an element of like saying to the public, ‘Geez, I'm really sorry that the government used to use your tax dollars and pay me to do this stuff and they don't anymore. Can I have $5?’” she said.
She’s familiar with community-based research from her time working at the University of New Hampshire’s Cooperative Extension. But Wallingford is hoping her new non-profit could bring people in her community even closer to the research process, which can be slow-moving and tedious. She wants to highlight the value of science, which she says academics may need to work harder to show to the public. One way she’s doing that is by hosting a YouTube video series and a podcast.
“I hope there's an audience of people who wants to see the research process, warts and all, and goes, ‘Oh, okay. If I was going to try to answer that question, how would I do it?’ she said.
She wants her organization to function like a
community supported agriculture program , where people can buy shares of a farm’s harvest and receive a weekly box of produce.
But in her case, the product is scientific research – research, she’s hoping, that could directly address questions that farmers, gardeners, homesteaders, and other growers in New England have about their own operations.
“There's some biological lessons to be learned,” she said. “Maybe I can help.”
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