Even in a nonfood production agricultural area like floriculture, the numbers are mind-numbing. The nursery and landscape industry employs more than 600,000 workers nationally during peak seasons. So agricultural education in the broadest sense is important. That is why Minnesota needs an urban agricultural high school. This arguably is the most critical agricultural education issue that will be addressed by the Minnesota Legislature during the current legislative session.
Agricultural education can be formal and high-brow.
I got excited to see that Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize winning physiologist whose theory of the prominence of western civilization is directly linked to agricultural systems, will be in Minnesota in April. Or it can be as basic as visiting your grandma's farm at Thanksgiving. The important thing is that people give some consideration to what it takes to put food on the table. And even if people aren't really interested in all the nuances of agricultural production, when they sit down to eat that nice juicy steak, I'm sure they're glad that somewhere had the educational wherewithal to produce it for their dining pleasure. Grand Forks Herald.