When I first declared my major as agriculture education, I was absolutely floored by the number of people who told me it was easy or unnecessary or, even worse, asked me why.

I grew up in a rural town. Back home, agriculture is still important to the people born and raised there, but to the transplants they don’t seem to understand it’s the way of life for us. Keep in mind, without agriculture, you wouldn’t have been able to go to Port City Java and get that Anna Banana Smoothie or to Chick-Fil-A and get that chicken sandwich, or better yet, go to the dining hall and eat locally grown food. It’s important for people to realize where the food they eat came from and how many steps it went thru.

Think about a chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A . Where did the chicken come from? Someone had to raise the chicken, grow the cucumber to be made into a pickle and grow the wheat that was transformed into the bun. As of 2009, the most current statistics available, North Carolina ranked fifth in the nation in broiler production. Broilers are a type of chicken raised exclusively for meat production. Just as a point of interest, in 2009, North Carolina ranked first in the nation in tobacco, flue cured tobacco and sweet potato production.

Not only the food you eat, but the clothes on your back depend on agriculture. Without a farmer to grow cotton, you wouldn’t have t-shirts, pants, cotton balls, denim or currency. The people who take the cotton and transform it from the balls of cotton into different products also depend on agriculture.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people tell me agriculture education is an easy major. In all honesty, I don’t think it’s easy. We have to take the general education classes, at least an introductory course in the different aspects of agriculture, and take the general teaching courses. If you never took an agriculture class in high school, you probably don’t realize quite how different it is from other classes.

Teachers don’t lecture for the full amount of time. The best agriculture classes are the ones where the teacher tells the students what to do, gives a demonstration, then let’s the students get to work in the shop or in the greenhouse. Those are the classes where students learn the most. As the popular saying has been modified, perfect practice makes perfect.

For example, with welding, which is considered a part of agriculture education, a student won’t really understand what the length of the welding electrode has to do with anything, but once they’ve touched a welder and practiced a few times, the length of the electrode will mean something to them.

Although the number of people directly involved in agriculture is decreasing, it doesn’t mean the significance of it is. The population is constantly growing, meaning there are more people to feed and clothe. The importance of using fertilizers properly and making the best use of land possible are becoming more and more important. Without education people on the importance of the different types of soils and how fertilizer impacts it, the capabilities of those directly involved in agriculture are going to decrease.

So, don’t just assume that agriculture or agriculture education is simple. It’s not. This is my major because it’s something I care about. I know I won’t make a lot of money in this field, but in the end, that doesn’t matter to me because I will have the opportunity to impress upon high school students how important agriculture is.