First, it’s a way you can change the world. We need to produce more food over the course of your working lives than we have in the past 10,000 years. We’re not going to get there if people like you don’t come up with the scientific advances.
That’s a huge challenge. It also means huge opportunity for you to do good.
Sociologists have predicted that people your age are primed to become a “hero generation” because of your care and concern about the wider world — and your belief that you can change it for the better.
Already half the people on the planet suffer from some level of malnutrition. That includes outright starvation, undernutrition that stunts growth and human potential and poor nutrition that drives skyrocketing obesity rates. And we’re projected to add another 2.5 billion people to the mix by the time most of you are about 55 years old.
Once upon a time we could grow our way out of this — just plant more acreage, add more fertilizer and irrigate more. But now subdivisions are paving over farms, the water supply is drying up, our fragile environment can’t withstand the amounts of pesticides and fertilizers we used in the past, and climate change is projected to reduce productivity.
We need future scientists like you to innovate our way off this collision course.
Second, agricultural careers offer huge opportunity for you to not only do good, but to do well. I mean well-paying jobs.
The average starting salary for someone graduating with a bachelor’s degree in an agriculture and natural resources major is more than $51,000. That’s higher than the projection for health care majors.
Agriculture has too many jobs and not enough people to fill them. There are a projected 58,000 job openings in agriculture and related fields each year that require at least a bachelor’s degree. The nation’s agricultural colleges aren’t producing anything close to that.
Third, I may be biased because of where I sit, but agriculture and natural resources are where the action is.
When you were getting ready to enter elementary school, the Human Genome Project was completed. It mapped all our genes: the instructions for the development and function of human beings. It was an absolute sensation. And it has contributed to huge leaps forward in medicine.
You’re coming of age when we’re in a position to do something similar in the plant world. We can make tremendous progress toward alleviating human misery if we can map the complete microbiome of important crop plants and their soils. It’s a Mount Everest waiting to be conquered. It’s one of your generation’s moonshots.
If you can figure out how a plant’s microbes change with geographic area, weather conditions, farming techniques and more, you might be able to predict which microbes will help crops perform better. That can translate to so many more mouths fed, better medicine and biofuel breakthroughs for a world of cleaner energy.
That’s just one example of how you’re starting your higher education careers at a time when agriculture is becoming cool again.
You’ll be on the cutting edge as an agricultural scientist. Your achievements will make the case for technology in the food world. We badly need that, because there’s skepticism that’s not grounded in fact over things like genetically modified organisms and climate change. As scientists focused on food, you’ll be able to help drive social change that leads to better health and a reduction of human suffering.
You may be criticized, you may be doubted, you may be misunderstood, but you won’t be bored.
A lot of us in the field now are of retirement age. We’re depending on you, and so is the world.
So please consider doing well, doing good, and working on something cool. Consider agriculture.
Jack Payne is the UF senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
