A growing field: Southeast's Department of Agriculture enrollment rises with changing agribusiness demands

Jordan Reno didn't grow up on a farm, but she was raised on agriculture in small-town Missouri.

"In East Prairie, that's about all anybody does, is farm," Reno said.

By the time she started working at an ag services firm in high school, Reno was hooked on the business of agriculture.

The junior at Southeast Missouri State University's Sikeston center is pursuing an agribusiness degree while working full time as an accounts receivable billing clerk for M-R-M Ag Services in her hometown. Reno intends to stay in the field, so to speak, after she graduates.

"I like dealing with all the farmers and their billing, so I'll probably do something along the lines of what I'm doing now," she said.

Above all, Reno, 21, said she wants to stay near her home, something celebrated by Southeast educators and employers accustomed to the exodus of educated young minds from the region.

As U.S. farmers retool and redefine ways to feed and fuel the world, Southeast Missouri State University is evolving to supply the minds and hands that will lead the agribusiness industry.

The university's Department of Agriculture has seen pronounced growth in recent years. This semester 234 ag students are enrolled in degree programs, a fraction of Southeast's total enrollment north of 10,000 but up from 180 three years ago, according to Dr. Michael Aide, department chairman.

Aide said the department has reinvented itself to attract and retain aspiring ag majors in the region. Key to that success is the David M. Barton Agriculture Research Center, near Gordonville. The center provides ag students with hands-on, real-life experience with field crops. Young researchers assist USDA and private enterprise alike in data collection, conducting tests on everything from pesticide control to the next generation of energy foodstock.

In the test fields today there are towering stands of green and granulated sweet sorghum, a crop new to the region that renewable energy experts say will likely replace corn as a leading ethanol fuel crop.

"We test plots out. We're figuring out how to grow it," Aide said. "It's huge. It produces such a biomass for energy production, it should rapidly outpace anything corn can give us in ethanol."

Such powerful production potential could reap big dividends for Southeast Missouri farmers and the region's economy. But that could be just the beginning. The fertile and water-rich Missouri Bootheel, Aide said, has the capacity to become the most productive agriculture region in the world, producing everything from cotton to potatoes.

And Southeast Missouri State University stands to be at the educational center of it all.

With Southeast's satellite campuses in Sikeston, Kennett and Malden now offering the agribusiness plant and soil science bachelor's degree program, Aide said accessibility and affordability have kept would-be ag students in Southeast Missouri.

"I think we have quite a few students who would not have gone to college had we not put this program in," he said of the research center's crop operations.

The ag department relies on private-sector professionals to teach courses. Reno said most of her instructors are part-time professors and full-time farmers.

"They have more of a one-on-one ability to teach you," she said. "They know more than what the book says; they have the experience."

Smith DeLine, marketer and location manager for Delta Growers in Charleston, Mo., said the farmer-owned cooperative works closely with Southeast in fertilizer, soil and crop testing. Delta also plans to bring more student interns into the co-op fold, DeLine said.

A 1975 Southeast graduate, DeLine serves on the ag department's educational council alongside others in the agribusiness community.

"As a long-time-ago graduate, I'm just really happy to see them reaching out and pushing that program to where it is and where it should have been a long time ago," he said. "There's lots of research going on."

Aide said more growth is on the horizon, projecting enrollment of 350 agriculture students within the next few years.

Agribusiness student Reno likes the stability her discipline offers, something other degree programs can't always claim.

"I don't feel there will ever be a time where you'll ever have cutbacks on farming," she said. "It's something that's constantly growing, constantly changing."

mkittle@semissourian.com

388-3627

Pertinent Address:

One University Plaza, Cape Girardeau, MO