Wanted: Ag grads
BY BERNARD TOBIN
Farmers can expect to see some fresh faces this spring. They may be handling your business at the bank, explaining new technology at a trade show or offering a tip on how to squeeze cash from your crops.While low commodity prices and the farm income crisis have cast a shadow over agriculture during the past six months, the sun is shining brightly on University of Guelph Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) students such as Laura Green, who'll graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in ag business later this month.
In November, Green, who was raised on a Wainfleet dairy farm, accepted an offer to join TD Bank as an associate agricultural account manager. As final examinations wind downthis month, Green and other graduating "aggies" are eager to join a job market that is anxiously awaiting their arrival.
"The job market looks really good," says Green. "A lot of business students are doing quite well and so are the science students. The agriculture program at Guelph is tremendous," and a great spring board to an agribusiness career. It also gives students a chance to return to the rural community. Green says she hopes to stay with the bank but likely won't stray too far from the farm. She and her fiancee, who hails from a 200-cow dairy operation, will be married this fall. "I'm sure there'll always be something for me to do," she confides.
Aggies Pam Smelski and roommate Terri Hoy know where they'll be heading the first week of May. Shakespeare's Smelski, who will graduate in December, will spend the summer working on Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean campaign. Hoy, raised on a Winchester farm, will be moving to Elmira to join the Royal Bank's account management trainee program.
"Outside of OAC, it's hard to find people with a good knowledge of agriculture," says Hoy. Smelski, an agriculture business major, and a former International Plowing Match Queen of the Furrow, has her heart set on an agriculture sales and marketing career.
"It's the only agriculture degree program offered in Ontario and there's quite a bit of demand for it as well," says Smelski, who always encourages young people interested in agriculture to join the program.
Demand is so great that many students have received two or three job offers. OAC assistant dean Mike Jenkinson says not all students are having to fend off employers, "but it's fair to say that if you're making the right moves and have a good background...you're going to have success in the job market, and you're probably going to have two to three offers to choose from.
"Certainly, the prospects for employment in agriculture business and ag science today is better than it was in the early 1990s," Jenkinson adds. Banks, crop protection and ag chemical companies are the top recruiters, and "we see them coming here earlier and earlier, trying to get the very best students."
TD Bank is one of the most aggressive recruiters. Warren Collier, TD's manager of human resources, retail banking - and a Guelph graduate - says in 1994 the bank recognized that agriculture was its second-largest lending portfolio, but many account managers had little agriculture experience. "We made a strategic decision to aggressively recruit at Guelph, which is the best ag school in Canada, bar none. It has a very good program from a commerce perspective, so a lot of the material they were taking was really relevant for the job we wanted them to do, which is basically being a commercial account manager for farmers."
Since 1994, TD has hired 20 to 25 OAC grads, and "they've been a huge success," Collier says. "Our turnover is very low, and our customer feedback has been excellent."
Students' knowledge of agriculture makes them a key asset for the bank, Collier says. "We were looking for people who grew up on a family farm, primarily in southern Ontario, and have contacts in a lot of those communities." TD also looks for people "who really have a passion for agriculture and people who want to work in those communities. We have no trouble finding those people in the OAC program."
Companies such as Cyanamid Crop Protection are also hunting for OAC grads. In November, Cyanamid technical service manager Scott MacDonald attended the annual students night hosted by the industry's umbrella group, the Crop Protection Institute. The gathering usually attracts 90 to 100 students, and "this year there was literally a job in the room for every student that wanted one," says MacDonald, who has recruited on campus for about 15 years.
Typically, Cyanamid hires five to eight students for its sales, research and technical service departments every year. Most of those are contract positions, running four to eight months. This year the company hired nine students. With staff turnover and promotions, Cyanamid averages about two full-time hires per year.
MacDonald admits to being biased toward the OAC program, noting that he and about 80 per cent of Cyanamid staff are OAC grads. But he feels OAC grads are more focused and ready to hit the ground running when employers call.
"Earlier in their academic career, they know what direction they want to go in compared to a typical B.Sc. student. Even at a bachelor level, their skills are fairly employable," MacDonald says.
"They tend to focus their summers and get relevant experience. In fairness, that's probably easier in our field than it is in some, but it does make them fairly broad and employable when they come out."
Last year, 309 students graduated from OAC's degree program, while another 146 students completed the diploma program at Guelph and its affiliated colleges in Ridgetown and Kemptville.
Growmark human resources specialist Sonia Brown says there's plenty of demand for diploma graduates, too.
"A lot of the diploma program people go back to the farm, but there are a lot of them who don't," says Brown, who helps identify talent for Growmark's 30 Ontario FS member co-ops.
"As the numbers drop off in the degree program and there are more and more jobs, I'm also looking at the diploma program," says Brown. She estimates that member co-ops hire full-time 10 to 15 graduating students each year as well as a host of students for summer employment.
Making sure OAC grads are ready for the world has been a top priority for OAC dean Rob McLaughlin.
Six years ago Guelph administrators met with a number of industry partners to put together a Guelph graduate report card. "Technical competence of our grads was right up there, but we didn't have the communication skills and the problem-solving skills," McLaughlin remarked at the Canadian Farm Business Management Council's Risk Management Conference last fall.
Program scrutiny produced a modified curriculum that stressed better communication skills, including writing skills, more debate of moral and ethical issues, and the role of the individual in working in groups.
"Corporations have flattened out, and there is a lot more team work now. Many of our graduates are self-employed and need a whole different set of skills to be entrepreneurs," McLaughlin says. The new curriculum will produce its first graduates this year.
There's more learning, less lecturing, McLaughlin says. "Students are working on real world problems now. They are much better prepared than they were before."
But lots of jobs and a challenging curriculum hasn't been enough to halt enrollment decline in the OAC degree program. Enrollment dropped 30 per cent in 1998, and that has McLaughlin worried. First-year ag science enrollment dropped from 140 students to 110 last year.
"Part of this is a perception problem. As an industry, we need to convince [potential students] that there are good-paying jobs in agriculture, challenging jobs," McLaughlin said.
Those who are there already know it.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
backBY BERNARD TOBIN
Ontario wheat growers could get the green light to sell their own wheat later this year.Growers thought they had the "Go" signal last spring when the Ontario wheat board unveiled an off-board marketing program that would allow growers to sell wheat, providing sales were made only to the U.S. But the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission suspended the program when Ontario millers complained that U.S. competitors would have an unfair advantage in gaining access to Ontario wheat.
At the wheat board's provincial delegates conference last month, delegates passed a resolution calling for the board to dust off the off-board program and make changes that would appease the commission and make the program palatable for growers who market through the pools and those who want to bypass them.
Under the new proposal, off-board sales would be made available both to Ontario and U.S. buyers with the program being capped at 150,000 tonnes annually.
Lambton wheat producer Harry Burma said "the objective of the resolution is to achieve acompromise. There would be no new rules required.
"This keeps the single desk system intact for those who prefer it, satisfies the needs of those who want a different system and involves less than 15 per cent of total board sales," Burma told delegates at the Toronto meeting.
Critics of off-board sales to domestic millers have argued that the program could jeopardize the future of the pools and allow millers to play the board off against individual growers and vice versa. Some growers feel the board could be starting down a slippery slope if it gives up any part of its domestic sales monopoly.
Wheat Board chairman Ken Nixon acknowledges growers' fears, but says it's difficult to determine what effect off-board sales will have on the marketing board: "There is some concern. Quite frankly, I don't know what is going to happen until it happens. So anything else is pure speculation."
Despite the uncertainty, growers still have been able to reach a compromise, says Nixon: "The motion that was passed a year ago was very much a compromise motion, where pools supporters said to those who wanted to go off-board, 'You can have your cake, but you can't eat it at our table.' That eventually met with problems by the commission.
"This resolution says, 'You can have your cake and...you can eat it at this table if you want to, but there's only so much of it you can have'."
Nixon says the resolution requires the board to have the new program ready for 1999 fall planting. Growers will likely get their first look at the program at June district meetings and be asked to make a final decision on its implementation at the board's August annual meeting.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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