Agricultural Education: Meeting Needs of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

The Challenge of the 70's and 80's During the 1970's, agricultural policy opened world markets and farming was very prosperous. Demand was great and production was expanded. However, inflation was out of control. Farmers went in debt to buy land and were paying the debt with inflated dollars. This was good until the central bank raised the interest rates as high as 20%, which put the agricultural economy into atailspin. During the 1980's, farms were lost and agricultural businesses consolidated. Agricultural education (then vocational agriculture) enrollments dropped and programs were closed. National FFA membership was in the low 300,000's. To complicate things even more, a report was released in 1983 entitled "A Nation at Risk" emphasizing the need to reform education. It focused on requiring students to take more academics and did not mention a role for career technical education or any other elective courses. The profession seemed to be going out of business. How did the profession respond? The national leadership structure changed. During the early 80's the National Council for Agricultural Education (The Council) was organized. The idea was to bring together leaders, thinkers and visionaries of the profession who were nominated to focus on keeping the instructional program "cutting edge. " The curriculum changed. Under the guidance of the Council, instructional content was broadened to include more applied science. More topic areas were developed such as Food Science and Safety, Animal Welfare, Environmental Science, Water Quality, Aquaculture and Biotechnology A National study was launched. The Council was able to persuade the US Departments of Agriculture and Education to jointly fund a study on secondary agricultural education. The prestigious Board on Agriculture, a committee under the National Research Council, conducted the study. The resulting report,entitled "Understanding Agriculture, New Directions for Education," helped change the direction of Agricultural Education. The National Research Council, a creditable group outside of the profession, brought National Focus on the need for educational programs in and about agriculture. We restated our purpose. With all the changes, the profession tended to lose their sense of purpose and identity. The Council led the profession in developing a series of strategic plans. The first plan helped to solidify and restate what the profession valued. This helped to restore the sense of purpose, and all of the agricultural education organization leaders signed the plan in December of 1989. In 1994-95, the plan was revised and evolved into a National thrust in 1996-1999 entitled "Reinventing Agricultural Education for the Year 2020. What were the results? These activities resulted in adjustments to the local program content and the enrollments went up. As an indicator, the National FFA membership is at a 28-year high and is expected to reach all time highs. The Challenges of Today. Meeting the Needs of Educational Reform. Educational reform is now codified in Federal and State laws. The Federal Law is known as "No Child Left Behind. " Currently educational accountability is determined by student achievement scores primarily in the core academic areas and thus places pressure on all elective subjects to justify their existence. This could be a threat to local programs. If the Agricultural Education programs are not seen as contributing to academic and school success, resources will be moved away from these programs. Meeting the needs of industry. While we are focusing on the educational issues, the agricultural business world is on the move. As in the 70's, the economic picture is looking good for the Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources industries. Related businesses seem to be expanding and the need for qualified workers is increasing. It is important that we look at the information from agribusiness-these businesses can give us compelling information as to the demand of agricultural education students as potential employees. …