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My name is Jim Dunn and I'm a professor of Agricultural
Economics. I teach in the AgriBusiness Management
program and I'm the undergraduate coordinator for that
program. And this particular program is
jointly offered by the College of Business and the College of
Agricultural Sciences and so
our students are required to take the
business core which includes accounting and
finance and management marketing, things like that.
And then they take a variety of courses in AgriBusiness
Management that are unique to the major.
There are a wide variety of
people in this major. Many of them
have no tie to Agriculture or rural America at all, they come from
Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and places like that. But they're
interested in food, and people
in our major do all kinds of different things.
That includes a variety of things
associated with food in agriculture starting from
selling things to farmers,
being farmers, buying things from
farmers, processing materials from
farms. A variety of things such as that.
And working for grocery stores, restaurants,
and doing a variety of other things in the world of
business that have nothing to do with AgriBusiness but the
skills that they learn in this major apply to any business.
But they're particularly helpful if you're
involved in things having to do with agriculture and food.
We have two or three different
paths for students who come in here.
Some people are very interested in business as such
and they come into the major
because they like the applied nature of it compared to
some of the things that happen in other parts of the university.
And then we have people that are very interested in agriculture
but realize that the business part of agriculture is
what really leads to the profitability
or failure of your farm or firm.
And so, you know, the problems
associated with controlling weeds are
certainly important to being a successful farmer but it
ultimately is the money. The same is true with other
businesses. It's a lot easier to get technical help
than it is to get business help.
And then we have people that get in here
for some other reason, whatever it might be. They
want to run a small business or
something like that. It's
very difficult to say what
it all amounts to. But certainly
the people who are coming from a business direction, people coming
from the agricultural direction, are the two main
streams. Almost all of our students do at least
one internship. Several of them will do two
and occasionally somebody will do three.
And so the firms that hire our students
are very interested in offering them the opportunity to do internships
both as a way
to convince them that they might want to work for their firm in the future,
and also as a bit of a
dry run to see if they want to hire this person.
And they also have a variety of problems that
are best dealt with by somebody that's just there for a short period
of time. You don't want to
take somebody away from their regular job to do these things.
And so they bring these people in and assign them
special projects that no one else can really get around to.
Big companies
and small. For example, Tyson Foods hires a
number of our students. The Farm Credit
System hires a number of our students. And other agricultural banks.
A whole bunch of farm supply companies
whether it be equipment, fertilizer, feed,
chemicals, hire our students.
The government hires them in a variety of ways.
And then smaller firms that you
might not have heard of would have one
or two people in a relatively small
operation. So we have
some of the biggest companies in the world and some of the
smallest hire our students.
We certainly have some people that are very interested in starting
their own business. I can think of
two students that graduated last year that
had businesses ongoing while they were students.
And they had to hustle away from class and go do whatever
it was they do on the side.
And they
structured their courses with those businesses in
mind. And other people
are more interested in working for somebody
else, have a little bit more of a structured job and don't want all
the risks and responsibilities of making the business
go. And as near as I can tell everybody
that came out of this major
since I've been the coordinator, for the last four or five years,
has gotten a job in their major. Some of them have more
opportunities than others because of a variety
of things associated with them, including their academic
performance.