C1
Matt Hickman
Managing Editor
701-572-2165
editor@willistonherald.com
Sunday
August 9, 2015
Lifestyles
Faces of Ag
Meet Sam Young, a young man of many interests
Editor’s note: A five-year
projection from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
and Purdue University says
there too few agriculture
students for the number of
job openings. This series introduces a few of the recent
agriculture graduates living
and working in the MonDak
and explores why agriculture is their chosen career.
BY RENÉE JEAN
RJEAN@WILLISTONHERALD.COM
Graphic design, health
care, counseling — these
were some of the other
career choices that confronted Sam Young when
he went off to college. It
was an exciting realm of
possibilities. And confusing
all at the same time.
“I picked the college first,
and didn’t really have any
idea what I wanted to do,”
he says.
Wisely, he decided not to
decide right away. He took
classes in all the things
that interested him for
about two years. Among
them, a class called plants
and people — an easy A, he
admits.
“That was like a general
class about how people
interact with plants,” he
recalls. “We did some gardening and stuff like that.
It was my freshman year,
and I really enjoyed it. I just
kind of fell into it.”
Young is one of the estimated 35,400 new graduates
with a degree related to
agriculture — about 22,500
too few for the number of
jobs available. The Wisconsin native is interning
at the Williston Research
Extension Center for what
he says has been a great
summer of learning.
‘They don’t show ag in a
fun or interesting way, so
people don’t think of it.’
At WREC, he works a lot
in the horticulture gardens,
but he’s there to help with
whatever he’s asked to
do. One day that might be
weighing chives from the
garden, another it might be
harvesting barley from the
dryland test plots.
Thursday, on the other,
was a complete change of
scenery. He went with soil
scientist Jim Staricka to
Nesson Valley, WREC’s
irrigated research farm.
Staricka talked to him a
little bit about soil science
as they removed equipment
that detects the water content of soil from a project
researching the effects of
tillage on soil.
The equipment bounces
a beam of neutrons against
the soil. If there is a lot of
water in the soil, more of
the neutron beam is able to
bounce back, or echo, and
Staricka will get a more intense reading in his digital
counter.
Young asked several questions about the process,
learning a little science
beyond what he’s learned
in classes. It’s been an
entire summer of learning new things with great
people, Young said. Best
of all is how the summer
has helped solidify in his
mind that he’s been on the
right track with his degree
program, environmental
science plant science innovations.
He’ll go back to Wisconsin for his senior year with
confidence that can only
help him tackle some of
his toughest courses yet —
organic chemistry for one.
And GIS, plant physiology
and taxonomy for a few
others.
“I really like my degree
because it is very wide
open,” he says. “You can
work with animals, too if
you want. You could be a
farmer. You could do genetics. You could start your
own business. There are
thousands of things you
could do. You’re not set in
one thing.”
Young himself didn’t
grow up on a farm. His
family lived in a suburb.
Farms weren’t too far away,
mostly dairy farms, but it
wasn’t something he ever
really thought about as
a career option. “I don’t
think most schools really
emphasize it, and if they
do it’s all through a text
book,” he says. “They have
more emphasis on computers and building stuff. They
don’t show ag in a fun or
interesting way, so people
don’t think of it.”
Young believes he’ll probably want to start his own
business, though he hasn’t
yet settled on what kind.
He feels that more people
should give an agriculture
career a shot and believes
they’d be pleasantly surprised.
“Being around nature,
getting to see how it all
works,” he says, “you just
get to see these things happen to the world, and it’s
always changing. You never
know what you might find.
Plants are really interesting. They offer so much to
people and there is so much
potential with them all.
They provide health, food
and life.”
RENÉE JEAN•WILLISTON HERALD
Sam Young is one of the new faces of agriculture. He is interning with Williston Research and Extension
Center. Here he is at Nesson Valley, helping remove water sensing equipment. The flags and stakes helped
mark the locations of the equipment.
RENÉE JEAN • WILLISTON HERALD
Sam Young writes down the weight on a batch of just-harvested chives in the Williston Research and
Extension Center’s horticulture lab.