Agriculture Degrees Are Not Useless

It’s all the buzz in the social media ag circles. In Yahoo’s Education section, Terrance Loose wrote an article “College Majors That Are Useless“.  He lists top 5 degrees that should be avoided. Three of which are in the agriculture industry. Mr. Loose could have done a little more digging for more accurate information before condemning a whole industry. Is a survey of “almost” 1000 employers going to give you complete enough facts about career opportunities across the country.

Mr. Loose brings up the school in Idaho that is cutting ag programs. My alma mater, Illinois State University, is adding programs and degrees to the agriculture department. The ag student enrollment is up with an increase for next year. ISU is hiring more professors (=more jobs) because of the influx of students. Their Dept. of Ag has continually had the highest job placement for graduates in the university.

Which brings me to the next point. The article states “don’t expect farms and ranches to be calling you”. If Mr. Loose would simply ask a farmer he would know that farms raise their own workers, send them to college and bring them back to the family farm. But farms and ranches do call crop specialists, large animal vets, elevator managers, seed dealers, custom applicators, machinery dealers, fertilizer plants, specialty food contractors, even USDA’s county managers, extension specialists, ect. All of which are highly likely to have degrees in agriculture.

Finally, the point “U.S. Department of Labor projects 64,000 fewer jobs in this field over the next seven years”. I would suspect that these jobs mentioned are low skilled jobs that don’t require a college degree. All I can compare this to is the ag climate here in Illinois where we have the 2000 lb wind-bag gorilla on our shoulder known as Chicago. (It’s not a monkey. It’s a big, stinky, resource sucking, arrogant, felonious gorilla.) One would think the behemoth would dominate the state. With 76,000 farms, Illinois biggest employer is the agriculture industry at 25%. 68% job growth in the state is ag related and 9% growth expected over the next 10 years (2008 stats).

So if the saying holds “How’s it play in Peoria, IL ?”, the ag industry for the country is likely to be similar.

Yahoo is doing a huge disservice to its readers and those looking for factual information on career decisions.  It makes one doubt the accuracy of the rest of the articles in the “College Majors” series.

A career in agriculture is an excellent choice. It’s a noble profession to earn a degree that can take you anywhere in the world or back to the family farm. My kids are discussing which ag major they would like to study and what ag college to attend. I couldn’t be happier for them.

Every year we haul corn out of the grain bins in December or January to the elevator. The kids are always giddy about pushing their favorite shovel to move corn, as you will see in the video. Usually the weather is bitterly cold but emptying the last bin the beginning of this Jan. was unusually warm.

Here is the video from last year. You can see the difference in the kids’ sizes in just one year. They eat lots of beef.

My super simple but not-so-secret recipe for Corn Casserole. I get requests to supply this dish at every gathering.

Corn Casserole

1 pkg jiffy corn bread/muffin mix
8oz sour cream
1 can cream style corn
1 can whole kernel corn (drained)
2 eggs slightly beaten
1 stick softened butter
1 C cooked wild brown rice (optional but worth the effort)


Mix all together pour into a 1 ½  qt casserole dish. Bake at 350 ‘til golden brown. 55 to 60 min. Depending on how deep the dish is. Cake tester should come out clean.


I cook a big batch of rice ahead of time because wild brown rice takes 50 minutes to cook. Then freeze the rest to use later.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Be sure to share with your friends

We finished harvesting the 21st of October.  Actually one of the earlier finishes for us.  Only two real breakdowns with the combine and they were small ones. One of the hose clamps on the air inlet pipe on the turbocharger broke. The other was a drive chain on the corn head.  Semi’s were a problem early on, but the old 99 International once it was running ran great.

Oh by the way, this is Judi’s lessor half posting this, she is still trying to get caught up from being part of ” #occupycombine in #harvest11 “.  She also has been helping me with fieldwork for next year’s crop. We did get one of our new wells hooked up to the house.  Great to have “enough” water.  We also added to the kids show string of heifers this last weekend, more on those girls later.

She is really a great combine operator and she does look for the last row of corn or soybeans every year.  Found it two Fridays ago.  I took her out to our favorite Italian restaurant last week. We celebrated and then went home and went back to work.  She is just really busy right now, getting caught up with the kids and house stuff and computer stuff, and well the life of a farm wife/ farmer.

She would  say she is just glad it is over for this year.

Well, Monday coulda been the day we finished.  We had started the last field of beans late Saturday afternoon. The weather was warmish. We whittled away at the last 160 acres for the next couple of days. With the elevator staying open ’til 8:pm, we could get quite a bit done in a day. But it started getting cloudy late Monday morning. NOAA kept increasing the chance of rain from 30% to 70%. By 3:pm it started raining and we had to quit with 20 acres left of the 2011 harvest season. Then we’ve had drizzle for the next two days to keep us out.

BigGreenCombine ran this skunk out of the beans. Lots of critters in the field

Antique Tractor Club

Jack called William to ask if we had a field where the Vintage Ag Assoc. could run their old tractors and plows. The group’s members look for a place every fall to give their equipment a work-out.  Just to show every group has its tensions. Some antique tractor members say that other member’s tractors aren’t old enough. I wonder when the cut off date is? Here are some of the pictures I took and a quick video.

Massey Ferguson

FARMALL B

Minneapolis-Moline

Massey Harris

Oliver

Theo (13 year old) drives the combine in a corn field. He tells what he likes and doesn’t like about it. Theo says it’s pretty easy when you watch and someone tells you how. He likes combining beans more. I know. He’s young yet.

Some would think that when a husband asks this question to his wife over the phone, he’s being frisky and hoping to get lucky later. Nope. During harvest when a farmer asks his wife that question it means: How fast can you come out to the field to run the combine while he runs to do ______. (fill in the blank) Farmer is thinking: How long will it take her to change into her jeans & tshirt? not I wonder if she is wearing something slinky and see-through.

That is the call I got tonight. When he asked What are you wearing, I smiled and said “Why do you want to know?” William said, “Because I want you to come out while I run the truck back to the bins.” Smile gone.

So goes the farm life of a frustrated farm wife.

Blowing the dust off he combine helps prevent fires.

William’s calculations must have been off. We finished corn on Wednesday. The yields were nothing to get excited about. I would say 150 would hit the average. We have since switched the combine over to beans. So far nothing too exciting there either. 40-45 bu/acre. Of course these are decent numbers for the drought we’ve been in.

This picture is of Z using the leaf blower on the combine before we put the bean head on. He seems to be the only one who can get the blasted thing going. When he’s done William uses it on him.

The combine has been running none stop (knock on wood) for 3 weeks. Since we haven’t had any rain. That’s good that we are getting through a bunch of acres. But it would be nice to get a few other things done.

We had another well dug. This one is by our house where the cattle are. It’s a shallow surface water well. Not near the volume as the well over the aquifer. But better than the well we are currently using. Plus it’s got 2000 gallon holding capacity that older wells don’t have.

drilling a well by our house

Ron our plumber/electrician is coming out this week to start ditching in the new lines and put in the pump. Man will it be nice not to have to haul water every day. The kids have a cattle show in Kansas City the end of the month. Hopefully we’ll get the new well going so they can get their bull and heifers cleaned up.

William’s goal this week is to do 50 acres a day to be finished with corn by Saturday. The elevator was only open Sunday Noon to 5 but we did take in 30 acres that day. Yesterday, we changed the fuel and air filters. One should always remember to open the shutoff valve on the fuel line after cleaning the  water separator bulb. The combine doesn’t go very far without the flow of diesel.  I still didn’t have the normal power and it sounded like we suped up the engine. We had the mechanic, Don, come out. He found a hose clamp missing around the pipe for the turbo charger  . I’ll take that kind of repair any day. We did manage to get 46 acres shelled despite the delays. The elevator closes at 6:30. I filled the truck and the grain cart after the last load. Fueled the combine up. William cleaned my windows. (such a sweetie) We both had a pony shoe and beer at the Boar’s Nest. Went home to bed.