Britt News-Tribune, IA
03-28-06
ISU professor makes stop to talk farming
By Bob Fenske, For the News-Tribune
FOREST CITY - Levon Esters took the podium, shuffled a few notes, looked up and smiled.
"I know what you're all wondering: What is a guy from the South Side of Chicago doing in ag," he asked with a laugh. And then he answered his question dozens of Forest City Rotary Club and their guests were asking during a presentation on the importance of agriculture to the U.S. economy.
"What we have to understand is that agriculture needs to break through the stereotypes of it just being 'cows, sows and plows.' And the Iowa State
University assistant professor dispelled the myths surrounding his chosen field with statistics that showed he wasn't spouting theories but proofs.
While the number of farmers nationwide is dwindling - Esters said there are now less than 2 million farmers - the number of jobs engaged in agriculture is 22 million and growing by the day. He said 1 of 6 jobs in America is related to agriculture.
"It's critically important to our economy that we realize agriculture is much bigger than farming," he said. "We must recruit urban areas - areas where a lot of people think of ag as something done 'out there' - to fill those jobs."
In a sense, Esters is proof that one doesn't have to come off the farm to find a career in agriculture. As a young boy, his family owned a small farm and he said there was nothing quite like leaving the hustle and bustle of the Windy City to spend time on the farm.
"I was the first farmer from my neighborhood," he joked.
After graduating from the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, the largest urban school of its kind in the nation, Esters went off to college and was going to major in business. But he was told that having an agriculture business degree would make him more marketable when he went into the job market.
His first job out of college was the clincher for him that ag was where it was at.
He talked about working as an assistant manager at a Walgreen's and "hating every minute of it."
So he headed back to college to get a master's degree and then went to Penn

State, where he received his doctorate degree.
In 2003, he took a teaching job at Iowa State, where he is the coordinator of the Ag Teacher Education Program and the advisor the Ag Education Club .
He said one of his chief goals at Iowa State is to send the message that agriculture isn't just about farming.
He talked about the number of careers - like biochemistry, nutrition, ecology, food safety, agronomy, turf management and so on - that can be had in ag without ever stepping on the farm.
"Sadly, the number of farmers has gone down and will continue to go down," he said, "but you can connect just about anything to the field of agriculture."
He urged his audience to tout the virtues of agriculture by doing everything from inviting guest speakers to running job shadow programs to serving on local ag advisory boards.
And he told students - both in the crowd and during a presentation to Forest City
High School students - that it is critical that they broaden their experiences, both in high school and when they head to college.
"I always tell students - besides maintaining a good GPA - that the most important thing they can do is get as many experiences as possible," he said.
"That can be studying abroad, taking part in job shadowing experiences ... the list can go on and on."