Indiana's Agricultural Competitiveness Built and Dependent on Quality Education

Agriculture is poised to offer new solutions to these modern-day challenges, simultaneously creating enormous opportunities for the industry. It will be forced, however, to rely even more heavily on the ingenuity of its producers and businesses and the development of more groundbreaking technologies.

This will only be achieved through even greater emphasis on and the advancement of agricultural education programs. Here in Indiana, we can count ourselves lucky to already have such a tremendous agricultural education base from which to build. Consider the following Indiana strengths: the presence of a world renowned land grant university; diversified agricultural related programs at and partnerships among other higher education institutions in areas such as land use, business and finance, life sciences and energy research; and a growing vocational system strongly supporting an agriculture curriculum and strong emphasis even at the secondary level on agriculture.

This broad-based focus on agriculture is well known to those of us who live and work in the industry and to those of us who are alumni of an agriculture program at one of these institutions. Surprisingly, it also is well recognized by business leaders across the state whose day jobs and customers put them nowhere near an Indiana farm.

The third Indiana CEO Survey, conducted and presented by Inside INdiana Business, Ice Miller LLP and Butler University, captures the opinions of over 350 Indiana chief executives from all areas of the state and from a wide range of manufacturing, service, and not-for-profit organizations. Asked about the strength of education in Indiana focused on specific industries, agriculture rated highest – ahead of life sciences, advanced manufacturing, information technology and alternative energy sources.

This indicates a strong competitive edge for Indiana and its agriculture industry when compared to other states. Maintaining that competitiveness, though, in this dynamic agricultural environment, is no longer sufficient. A strong and relevant educational program is one that responds to anticipated and just emerging issues.

Agricultural education is accustomed to this evolutionary process and its responsiveness to industry change has been at times slower or faster than warranted. Program or curriculum changes once centered exclusively around new farm management strategies or production techniques. Today, entirely new programs and multi-disciplinary curriculum are needed to address the modern needs of agribusiness from biotechnology and genomics, finance and marketing, animal disease and human health, to ecosystem services, food safety, chemical and biological engineering, information and satellite technology, and so many others.

Indiana's world-class institutions, while producing the next generation of agricultural leaders, also are home to some of the most acclaimed researchers and educators – in fact, two of the past three World Food Prize recipients (the Nobel Prize equivalent) are from Indiana. Yet at the same time that groundbreaking research is taking place at our finest universities, more of it undeniably is occurring in private laboratories. For comparison purposes, Monsanto (based in St. Louis and one of the largest seed biotechnology providers) invested $980 million last year in its research and development (R&D) programs – in contrast, the annual research budget for Purdue University's College of Agriculture was $100 million.

This in no way implies that private R&D has or should supplant that of the public sector. In fact, a somewhat natural line of demarcation has emerged with public research primarily centered on the basic sciences and that of the private laboratories on applied science. The two actually depend quite heavily on the findings and intellectual property of one another.

It is important that Indiana's education executives and administrators, even with constrained budgets, keep agriculture as an important curriculum and research priority. Every effort should also be made to advocate for increased federal funding of agricultural research and education. All of agriculture missed that opportunity in the passage of the recent $789 billion Federal stimulus package that included $10 billion for the National Institute of Health but nothing for agricultural-related research. Continued collaboration between our agribusiness and research institutions as well as among our state's educational institutions at all levels is necessary to ensure Indiana's competitive advantage in agriculture.

But even broader and more coordinated efforts still are needed to allow Indiana agriculture to fully leverage and benefit from the strengths of its educational system. As a state priority, Indiana must attract more agricultural, food and energy-based businesses to keep the well-trained minds here. And, when one considers our other natural advantages of agricultural production and diversity; the low cost of doing business here; geographic proximity to major customer markets; and infrastructure, Indiana and its agriculture industry is extremely well-positioned to accomplish just that.

This publication is intended for general information purposes only and does not and is not intended to constitute legal advice. The reader must consult with legal counsel to determine how laws or decisions discussed herein apply to the reader's specific circumstances.