Commentary: Make the Ag-Tech Connection for Students
The U.S. simply doesn’t have enough skilled workers to continue to push the farm industry forward.
Technological developments in the ag sector have raised expectations not just for crop yield but workers as well.
Farmers are “hard-pressed these days to find mechanics trained to maintain their 21st-century equipment or workers who understand the complexities of modern farming,” Matt Krupnick reported for The Guardian.
The root of the problem is multi-faceted. First, the U.S. has a staggeringly low number of students graduating with degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM).
The country currently graduates roughly 500,000 STEM students each year, which is dwarfed by countries like China and India, which have millions of graduating STEM students.
The lack of STEM graduates creates a problem across the board, but it increasingly impacts the agriculture industry, which needs more workers with technical skills.
According to Purdue University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agriculture industry will need nearly 60,000 college graduates to fill new roles by 2020—and as of 2015, college agriculture programs were only producing approximately 35,400 future work candidates.
As a result, some community colleges are stepping up to the plate to bridge this divide. The Rural Community College Alliance has cited that nearly two-thirds of the community colleges in the U.S. are located in rural areas. These institutions have a unique opportunity to help their students realize the promise and potential of the American agriculture industry.
Besides efforts at the collegiate level, our country should take a hard look at sparking the interest of middle and high school students not just in STEM fields, but also in the ways in which STEM and agriculture can work hand in hand.
The food and agriculture technology markets are projected to reach approximately $730 billion by 2023. While these figures are a sign of encouragement for the agriculture industry, for the U.S. to remain globally competitive, steps must be taken to support technology’s place in the everyday life of farmers and ranchers.
The first step? Making sure we have the skilled farmers of tomorrow ready to take on the challenge.
This is an excerpt from a column written by former Sen. Mike Johanns, the 28th secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and published in AgWeb. The Association believes his arguments are as fitting for the shortline industry as they for are farming.