According to a July FarmDoc article, Agricultural Consumer Economics Professor Mark White shares that connecting young people to a beneficial work opportunity is a critical step in building and sustaining the local labor force. To this end, IL Corn is one year into a pilot program with several Illinois community colleges that makes those connections.
In 2023, IL Corn and Highland Community College in Freeport, IL began a project to help get high school students with little to no agricultural experience plugged into an Agricultural Capstone Experience. The opportunity exposes students to skills, knowledge and careers in animals, plants, food, technology, mechanics, and the environment – and the students complete the program with 14 college credits. The program continues in 2024.
IL Corn also works with Illinois Central College on a different way to tackle the same problem. At ICC, IL Corn provides tuition-free opportunities to take a general agricultural class for students that have not declared a major. Again, our effort is to expose students that might not be considering agriculture to the agricultural jobs that are prevalent in Illinois.
“There are fewer young people in the labor market than there used to be, and we know this based on the U.S. population data. In each of our communities, I’m sure we’ve experienced that there are just fewer young people working at local diners or retail stores and that isn’t because young people don’t want to work – it’s because there are fewer young people,” said IL Corn Marketing Board Chairman Jon Rosenstiel.
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Categories: Illinois, Crops, Corn, Education