Tilling new roles: training tomorrow's agribusiness workforce requires as much time in the classroom and laboratory as it does the field.

• Author: Wood, Suzanne M.
• Position: SPONSORED SECTION

Perhaps more than other professions, agriculture gets under a person's skin at a young age. That's a credit to youth organizations such as Future Farmers of America, which has more than 19,000 members in North Carolina. "My students tend to be more optimistic about their future careers, especially those planning to enter the agricultural industry," says Jennifer Broadwell, a teacher at Millbrook High School in Raleigh and adviser to its 150-member FFA chapter. "It's easy to take students that have grown up on a farm that has been in their family for generations to join the FFA and pursue a career in agriculture. It's extremely rewarding to see students that had little to no knowledge of the agricultural industry when they entered high school now pursuing degrees in an agricultural field."

Across North Carolina, employment in agriculture is either holding steady or growing, depending on the discipline. It contributes about $72 billion to the state's economy and employs nearly 700,000. "I think we're very bullish on agriculture in general," says Mike Morton, CEO of Statesville-based Carolina Farm Credit, one of the state's oldest farm lenders. "It's the largest industry in our state and always will be with our great climate and natural resources."

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North Carolina agriculture is a broad category that includes farming, forestry, livestock production, fisheries, horticulture and landscaping. Whether they choose production farming, the business side of agriculture or become scientists who develop more productive and resilient crops, tomorrow's agribusiness workers face unique challenges and need to prepare differently than past generations. Understanding finances and legal issues is just as important to farmers as tilling a straight row. Courses in those subjects are standard fare in agricultural programs. "As we like to say, agriculture is more than just cows, plows and sows," says Richard Linton, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University in Raleigh. "An N.C. State student is shovel-ready. We have 20 departments and a lot of cross-disciplinary courses, so the students really are holistic in their knowledge of agriculture as opposed to being pigeonholed into one area."

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A lesser-known program within the college is the two-year associate degree offered by the Agricultural Institute, which graduates nearly 200...