MIT Department of Anthropology

Mind, hand, and harvest

MIT Anthropology

Mind, hand, and harvest

A volunteer-driven pilot program brings low-cost organic produce to the MIT community.

Stephanie M. McPherson | School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

November 25, 2025

On a sunny, warm Sunday MIT students, staff, and faculty spread out across the fields of Hannan Healthy Foods in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Some of these volunteers pluck tomatoes from their vines in a patch a few hundred feet from the cars whizzing by on Route 117. Others squat in the shade cast by the greenhouse to snip chives. Still others slice heads of Napa cabbage from their roots in a bed nearer the woods. Everything being harvested today will wind up in Harvest Boxes, which will be sold at a pop-up farm stand the next day in the lobby of the Stata Center back on the MIT campus.

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