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© A
g
C
areers
.
com
2017
To feed a
HUNGRY
world
By Dr. Ken Foster, Professor - Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University
money, particularly in traditionally poorer parts of the
world such as China, south Asia, and Africa. What does
this have to do with food? Inhabitants of these parts of
the world will spend more of their extra income to buy
food, and this will impact the job market in food and
agriculture.
Thirty-five years seems like a long way off to many
of you, but to put it into perspective, it has “only” been
35 years since I graduated from Purdue University with
a degree in agriculture. If you are a student today, 2050
will arrive long before you are even close to retirement.
Even more so, businesses and governments are already
You’ve probably heard
that there may be as
many as 9 billion people
inhabiting the earth by
2050. What doesn’t get
as much attention is the
growth of incomes around
the world. On average,
people are earning more
responding to this future challenge today by setting goals
to double food production in the next few decades while
minimizing environmental consequences.
For the college graduate, I see four categories of em-
ployment in the future. The first are decision makers. This
encompasses everyone from the manager of a business
to those who support her decisions through analytics
and strategy expertise. In 2015, Dr. Allan Goecker, the
assistant dean emeritus of Purdue University’s College
of Agriculture was lead author on a USDA National
Institute for Food and Agriculture publication titled
“Employment Opportunities for College Graduates in
Food, Agriculture, Renewable Natural Resources, and the
Environment, United States, 2015–2020.” They estimated
that nearly 58,000 jobs will be created annually in the
USA involving food, agriculture, and natural resources
between 2015 and 2020. Of those jobs, they projected
about 46 percent will be in management and business.
Among this category I include farmers. Farming today is
an occupation that integrates business management,
science based knowledge, advanced technology, and
increasing data analytics. A university degree is key
to be a successful “decision maker” in the food and
agribusiness area. Frankly, I hear from employers often
that it is useful to have dual majors or at least a minor
so that one’s training is in integrating the complexities
of biology, technology, and economics that differentiate
food, agriculture, and natural resource careers from those
in other industries.
The second area is that of technological experts.
This is the category of employment that encompasses
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
(STEM). A hallmark of agricultural and food production
systems has always been a drive toward greater
efficiency. That is, getting more product from a given
resource base whether that be the land, labor, and
capital employed on farms or more retail food product
from a given raw farm commodity. These gains occur
because brilliant people apply scientific and
technological discoveries as well as innovate on their
own. It’s the reason why we have the most affordable,
safe, and abundant food supply that the world has ever