A&M Program Sows Seeds for More Agriculture Grads
By San Antonio Express-News
Oct. 7–Declining enrollment in the agriculture school and a looming agricultural worker shortage have convinced officials at Texas A&M University to fight back with a marketing program showing students how the industry has changed.
“We need to give the public and students an opportunity to learn about our industry, to learn about career opportunities here and in the United States,” said Edward Romero, assistant dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who helped develop the marketing and educational tool called AgForLife.
The program, available both on the Internet and in written form, centers on an industry map that shows how many professions and industries are linked to agriculture. Romero said students who might have shied away from agriculture because of its rugged, unsophisticated image can be shown in AgForLife that agriculture also means jobs in labs, with marketing firms, as engineers or in other professional capacities.
“Agriculture is much more than production. It’s nutrition, food safety issues and trade issues,” said Elsa Murano, A&M’s vice chancellor and former U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary. “These are the disciplines we need to train students in so Texas agriculture can provide consumers what they need and want.” The USDA predicts that agriculture will experience a shortfall of 2,700 workers through 2010 even though 32,300 students graduate from the nation’s agriculture schools each year, according to a report by A&M’s Agriculture News.
Undergraduate enrollment at A&M’s school of agriculture grew through 2003 but since has fallen off by a few hundred, Murano said. AgForLife will be taken to high schools and colleges the next year in hopes of reversing that trend.
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