Ag tech: Four-year agribusiness degree now offered at university's regional campuses

For the first time this fall, Southeast Missouri State University is offering its four-year agribusiness degree at the regional campuses in Sikeston, Malden and Kennett, Mo. Dr. Michael Aide, chair of the Department of Agriculture at Southeast, says the program specializes in row crop production and was tailored to the Missouri Bootheel's agriculture base.

"The goal is to turn out graduates that have real world experience; that can work in agribusiness and be productive from day one," says Aide. The program covers business and technical components, including accounting, agriculture marketing, finance, agronomy, horticulture, cotton and rice production and pest management. Graduates will be prepared to do more than drive tractors, says Aide -- they could be lenders, merchandise managers or irrigation specialists, or they could run cooperatives and work for absentee farmers, for example.

About 50 students are enrolled in agribusiness at the regional campuses, and 234 are in the agriculture program at the Cape Girardeau campus, which Aide says focuses on traditional Midwestern farming, like corn and livestock. According to Aide, the university has conducted studies and found that many students interested in agriculture went to Mississippi State, Arkansas State and Murray State because those schools offered agriculture programs --like row crop production -- that were not available at Southeast. Now that the university has added row crop production at the regional campuses, Aide expects more students to stay in Southeast Missouri for their education, and continue to work in the area after graduation.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of the new program is that the university has worked closely with locals already working in the agriculture field.

"We're fostering an informal partnership with local agribusiness professionals," says Aide. "We asked what should we be teaching? And we adopted their advice into our degree."

Eventually, Aide hopes to engage these professionals as teachers for the agribusiness degree.

"Who knows better to teach our young people than those who have done it successfully?" says Aide.

Also unique is the agribusiness degree's emphasis on technology.

"Technology is so vastly different," says Aide. "My aggies have to be masters of technology as well as businesspeople." Farmers are using GPS for precision agriculture, and it's not unusual for farmers to carry Blackberry phones so they can constantly check the commodity markets.

"Family farms will remain the permanent basis of agriculture here -- but the tractors and the implements they're pulling, and what all they can do is being done so much better because of computer technology," says Aide. "We don't over or underfertilize our land or add too much or too little chemicals, because we know exactly what to apply in order to maintain a profit and promote environmental quality. Technology has become key."