Ag Students Can Compete With All

Last week I spent a day talking about food and farming with agriculture students at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla. Unlike last week's trip to Boulder, Colo., this would have to be described as a friendly crowd. The kids were bright, interested, and out in force for my presentation, although the size of the crowd might have had something to do with the extra credit they received for attending. 

I talked about farming, made the case for the way we do things now, and answered some good questions the best I could. It was fun for me, and I hope not too painful to my audience.

The dean of the Ag school spoke before I did, and mentioned the fact that the university had just named their 10 outstanding seniors, four of whom were enrolled in the school of agriculture. A success rate some four times what would be expected given the number of students studying agriculture. This didn't surprise me, and I would guess is a record of achievement that is not unusual in land grant schools across the nation. 4-H and FFA train kids in the skills they need to succeed in life and in college, and those outstanding seniors reflect those skills. 

The meeting and my stay were all organized by the agronomy club, and everything went like clockwork. I spoke to an agronomy class earlier in the day, and at least two thirds of the students were planning on returning to their family's farm.  Whether the students I met end up in production agriculture or working in the industries that serve agriculture, I'm convinced they'll have successful careers and be a credit to their communities. 

We do a good job of training our successors, and we can be proud of a system that turns out students like I met in Oklahoma, or the kids who we work with in Missouri through the various youth programs that Farm Bureau sponsors.

I do have one small complaint. I overheard a professor complain that a neighboring agriculture college, located on a campus with a restrictive admissions policy, was having trouble accepting agriculture students. His solution was to lower admission requirements for students entering agriculture. 

I didn't challenge his observation, but his comment disturbed me. If students from rural areas aren't competitive, the problem shouldn't be solved by lowering the bar, but by challenging rural students and their high schools to step up to the plate. 

We in agriculture often face the assumption we aren't quite up to speed because of our clothes, our small town backgrounds, and our willingness to enter a profession that doesn't come with a title or an air conditioned office. That is patently untrue. Anybody who is successful at farming in today's world could compete in any other field as well.

There's already prejudice against rural folks; we shouldn't add to it by requesting special treatment for our students when it comes to college admission.