Applying the Science-A Governor's School for Agriculture Tangent

Even though this blog is focused around my I-CAL trip, today I'm going on a different blogging path.  I am currently working at Virginia's Governor's School for Agriculture.  As a graduate of the program and hoping to go into agricultural education, I felt that this was a good job for the summer.  Here I supervise students with their respective research projects on issues, such as Global Food Security.

What you might be surprised to find is that only about 10% of the students here have agriculture experience before attending.  Majority of these students are from urban and suburban areas.  Teaching agriculture in schools is a completely foreign concept to them.  I used to think that it was such a shame that more students who were already involved in agriculture were not in the program.  Today, helped me to realize that those students who don't have agriculture backgrounds need this program the most.

One of these urban students today had spent some time after class speaking with one of the Agricultural and Applied Economics professors.  Later, he told the professor that after hearing his lecture and that of a Crop and Soil Environmental Science professor, he has gotten all torn up about his future.  The student was thinking about doing business, but now after his time here at Governor's School for Agriculture he's contemplating an Agriculture Economics degree.  He said that he loves being able to apply economics.  That's what agriculture is all about, applying science.

Things had gotten kind of wild at Governor's School, but a day like today really helped me to see that there is a bright future for agriculture, even with a dwindling resource of home-grown agriculturalists.  As Adel from the U.S. Grains Council would say: "Agriculture is sexy!" and it appears that is pretty appealing to future generations.