Ag: Good Market for College Grads
A report recently released from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Purdue University anticipates more jobs in agriculture than graduates in coming years. Researchers expect about 58,000 jobs to open each year of the next five years in agriculture and agriculture-related jobs and only about 35,500 graduates to fill them.
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Did You know? The average starting salary for graduates with an ag degree in 2014 was $48,000.
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Specific areas of growth include plant scientists, water-resource scientists and engineers, farm animal veterinarians, and precision agriculture and pest control specialists.
"There is a tendency to look at agriculture through a very narrow prism of production agriculture," said Tom Vilsack, USDA Secretary. "It's not just production agriculture now. This is an expanding, entrepreneurial, creative, opportunistic aspect of our economy."
Reaction to the report acknowledged that aspects of the industry such as farm equipment sales are not in a prospering.
To read the complete job report, go to FarmEquip.org/agjobs. S