Plugging The Ag Brain Drain
When we hear of crises that negatively impact agriculture, the topics are typically agronomic, environmental or economic in nature, and they focus on the acute impacts to agriculture. Rarely do we hear about agriculture’s chronic long-term crisis—that is, the ag brain drain.
For most kids who grew up on the farm, the consistent message heard was “don’t get a job in agriculture,” or “don’t become a farmer!”
This was typically followed by a list of careers that were not agriculture-related. All too often, the message is strong and consistent enough that farm kids do grow up and enter nonagricultural professions, and they never considered a career in agriculture. Why? Because all too often, farming is only associated with production agriculture. But it’s so much more than just putting hay in front of the cow and milking it. At the farm level, consideration is never given to fields upstream or lateral in nature. As such, kids growing up on farming operations—those who firmly understand agriculture’s unique operations and processes—are lost to other industries. These kids who may be wizzes at numbers and economics, for instance, go off to become successful in nonagricultural fields. They never considered their upbringing as an asset and never considered a specialized ag field that would leverage the knowledge and skills that they learned on the farm.
This brain drain is detrimental to our industry. It erodes the skill base and holds back the industry.
As consultants, we can offer a sustainable career path for these talented farm kids and keep them in agriculture. Every day, our researcher-consultants work with the leading edge of ag technology from various sectors and help to develop it for tomorrow’s agriculture. Every day, our crop consultants find solutions to growers’ problems and become educated on the next new trends. As an independent ag researcher with a degree in plant science, I tell my new recruits that I feel I use a good majority of my education on a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month basis because of our job sector’s diversity.
The first quarter of the year is typically very fluid in the job market, and as consultants, we have an opportunity to reach out to universities, colleges and even high schools.
We can connect with the farm kids who are interested in a career in agriculture and show them that there is a viable future in this sector.
The inroads and connections we make today will pay dividends tomorrow by helping to retain A-level talent in our field and not allowing it to by siphoned away by another sector.
