Reasons We Need To Rethink How To Get Young People Interested in Ag
October 26, 2021 I received an email from a reader who took me to task for my editorial last month. In that column, a California grower I was talking to lamented the fact that much of the new agricultural technology was not field-ready because it takes technical sophistication to implement it. However, many of those tasked with the operation have only a high school education. Only a high school education?
This reader admirably defends his employees.
“I don’t know what you teach a college student that would train him to operate a high technology piece of farm equipment,” his email states. “I’d bet I’d have my hard-working non-college educated farm workers running almost anything that actually works just as well as a college grad.”
As you can probably tell, this reader, who asked that his name not be used, is a grower. Not a fruit grower, but a row crop grower, farming corn and soybeans as well as vegetables in Michigan, and he used to farm in Florida. It’s not about the employees’ level of education, he says, it’s all about the training.
“High school grads can easily operate high-technology equipment as long as programming or setting up the equipment isn’t too complicated,” he says. “College grads could have the same issues setting up the same equipment.”
The grower says he’s semi-retired now but still keeps his hand in, and says he has sub-inch accuracy on his tractors and the latest technology on his sprayers.
“We have all the auto-steer and rate controllers on our farm, and education has nothing to do with how well someone runs a piece of equipment,” he says. “Training someone to run that equipment is the important part. If they are good with smart phones, they will learn how to run the equipment.”
Interestingly, the grower agrees with the California grower on the root of the problem, which was the basis of my editorial, that many ag tech developers don’t spend enough time in the field.
“The problem is when engineers don’t know what the equipment needs to accomplish, they typically make the equipment way too complicated and not dependable,” he says. “That’s why most equipment advancement is done by farmers themselves. Then engineers can take that design and improve on it and get the machine into mass production.”
It appears there are two problems: the technology hasn’t been sufficiently field-tested, and employees lack training — whatever their level of education.
It reminded me of what another grower, John Amarel of Yuba City, CA, a member of our Editorial Advisory Board, told me about the ag labor problem in this country. A lot of the new equipment will save on labor but does require technical sophistication.
His answer would be making classes available to high school students in agricultural areas with hands-on instruction so they’re ready for today’s agricultural technology and could go right to work. John thinks a lot more young people would be interested in working in ag if they had a good taste of just how modern and sophisticated the technology is today.
“As growers,” John says, “we need to educate our way out of this labor problem. We need to invest more in our youth.”
I hope growers take note of what John is saying, but even more crucial are the ag equipment companies. That investment in our youth in the form of training will likely have to come from them in some fashion so they can ensure that when their new equipment is delivered, it hits the ground running.
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