Promoting Young Farmers
Promoting Young Farmers. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
We all can remember a time when we wanted to be a fireman or a policeman but when reality set in during our high school years and we finally had to start making plans for a future things started getting tough. College was where the rubber met the road and a lot of those “plans” were replaced with reality. Well the ag industry has really been feeling that reality and now Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack has come up with a plan to help make college more affordable.
VILSACK: Increasing the number of Pell grants as well as increasing the overall award of a Pell grant to make it just a bit easier for young people to afford college or community college education. Increase Pell grant awards by the consumer price index so that they will always keep pace with inflation.
Vilsack says that jobs in this country depend on agriculture.
VILSACK: One out of every 12 jobs in this country is connected to agriculture. One of the reasons why we’ve turned the corner in this economy is because we have a strong agricultural economy, we’re seeing rural unemployment go down at a little faster rate than other parts of the country and that’s because of the success of agriculture so we obviously want to continue to build on that.
Getting a good education is important as well as making sure it is a well-rounded education.
VILSACK: You can biology, you can take chemistry, you can take physics, those are all important. Or general science, you could take all those and get a basic understanding. Being able to have a conversation and discussion about the various things farmers and ranchers have to do, I mean, farmers and ranchers not only have to figure out how to plant the crop but they need to know how to fix the combine or the planter when things go awry. Markets change on a daily, minute-by-minute basis and if you make the wrong decision you either be very profitable or not so profitable so it’s important I think to have the ag education component of a K-12 system so that those whop are interested in farming can get the basics.
Vilsack spoke to students via teleconference about the opportunities a career in agriculture education can afford them in the work place. And he says there is a big pay off.
VILSACK: I mean the ability in production agriculture to feed the world. There’s no greater calling than basically making sure that humankind survives. To be able to improve the environment of this country to make sure that we continue to have the soil that allows us to have this rich diversity of agriculture production. The ability to create a whole new energy future for this country, the capacity to wean ourselves off of our reliance of foreign oil through a bio-based economy, these are all the options, all the opportunities that you as high school students - college students have today. But you have to have the education. You have to have the training.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
