The Importance of Agriculture Cannot be Undersold

By Jason Fearneyhough, Director, Wyoming Department of Agriculture

As students at universities and colleges around the country dive into the spring semester of school, it’s unfortunate that many of them may have to spend time defending their major as a result of a story on the internet. Recently, The Daily Beast by Newsweek, Yahoo and many others posted articles claiming Agriculture, Horticulture and Animal Sciences were among the most “useless” degrees for students to obtain based on the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 2012 Job Outlook study. In the study, 1,000 employers were asked about their hiring plans and Business, Accounting and Computer/Information Science majors received the highest ranking by employers prioritizing them for recruitment.

The study may be able to draw some valid conclusions to what those 1,000 employers surveyed are looking for, but it’s incredibly short-sighted and out of touch to draw sweeping conclusions based on such a small, targeted sample of employers. In fact, unlike this article and study suggest, the value of ag-related degrees cannot be taken lightly.