Ag Day 2.0 provides glimpse at Red River Valley ag jobs

EAST GRAND FORKS, Minn. — East Grand Forks Senior High ninth-grade students discovered that there’s more to agriculture than meets the eye during a Wave Career Academy event that featured speakers from a variety of industry stakeholders

The Ag Day 2.0 event held Monday, April 29, at the Heritage Village in East Grand Forks was designed to give students insight into the many careers available in agriculture, complementing the information they are learning in their freshman introductory to careers class in school.

Ann Bailey / Agweek

“It lets them see what career options are out there that they never really thought about,” said Stephanie Larson, Wave Career Academy coordinator. “Kids can’t be what they don’t see.”

She believes attending events like Ag Day 2.0 also helps students learn about and connect with the agricultural industry in their backyard.

“It makes them more informed members of their community, gives them a better understanding of what we have,” Larson said.

The 165 ninth graders rotated through three buildings that had a total of eight stations where men and women from businesses, post-secondary institutions and organizations gave 20-minute sessions.

The eight stations, based on the Minnesota State Agricultural Center of Excellence, were plant systems, environmental systems, biotechnology, power, structural and technical systems, natural resource systems, agribusiness systems, animal systems and food products and processing systems.

Each of those eight pathways were represented by someone from the northwest Minnesota region: University of Minnesota Crookston Natural Resources Department was at the plant systems station; West Polk Soil and Water Conservation District was at the environmental systems station; Northland Community and Technical College was at the animal systems, agribusiness systems and biotechnology stations; RDO Equipment Co. was at the power, structural and technical systems station; and American Crystal Sugar Co. was at the food products and processing system station.

Ninth-grader Ryan Clauson was surprised to learn at the animals systems session taught by Northland Community and Technical College students that livestock, such as cows and sheep, don’t just provide food for people to eat. They also are made into many by-products including, lotion, gelatin and insulin.

“All the different day-to-day products,” Clauson said.

The Ag 2.0 event gave his classmate Julia Aker more insight to the jobs available in the agriculture industry.

“It definitely is expanding my knowledge of jobs and careers,” Aker said.

The event also gave students information about the natural world and careers in it through the University of Minnesota Crookston Natural Resource Department presentation at the sessions.

Laura Bell, University of Minnesota Crookston Natural Resource Department laboratory coordinator, talked about the skunks, badgers and snakes that are in Minnesota and showed them a live spider ball python she calls Vanessa, using the snake to teach students about the reptiles and herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians.

Ann Bailey / Agweek

Herpetologists can have careers as biologists, wildlife professors or caretakers of animals like Vanessa.

“Isn’t she amazing?” Bell said, as Vanessa coiled around her arm.

On the flip side, the event gave agricultural processors, such as American Crystal Sugar an opportunity to tell students about the careers that are represented at their businesses.

For example, the Moorhead, Minnesota-based company employs a total of about 1,200 workers at its five factory districts up and down the Red River Valley, in skilled trades and production and professional jobs.

Exposing students to the variety of career possibilities in agriculture supports what Dane Kjono teaches in his East Grand Forks Senior High introductory to careers class.

Either young adults view agriculture as synonymous with farming or they don’t know anything about it at all, Kjono said. The Ag Day 2.0 events offers an opportunity to dispel that myth and expand their knowledge.

“So many kids live in this agriculturally rich area, and they have no idea," he said. "Hopefully it gives them appreciation of the agricultural industry.”

The American Crystal jobs cover the breadth of the sugarbeet industry, from development of the plant’s seeds to processing the end product and jobs in between, including the agronomists who help farmers with production questions, Ben Doyle, American Crystal Sugar workforce development manager, told the East Grand Forks Senior High freshmen.

Those jobs include ones that students don’t expect to be at a sugarbeet company, said Nicole Smestad, American Crystal Sugar recruiting specialist.

“No one knows that we have nurses; no one knows that we have welders,” Smestad said.