AG week: Southwest AG Summit student program

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - AG week continues with day one of the Southwest AG Summit held at Arizona Western College.

Local students in middle school, high school and college attend the summit in hopes of eventually working in the agriculture industry.

Students heard speeches from working professionals in the industry and then broke out into various sessions, consisting of food safety, nutrition, biosystems engineering and the trade show field demo.

Cibola high school junior, Taygen Newby says she has always been interested in agriculture and comes from an AG related family.

“I’ve been looking into being a PCA, so a pest control advisor, where I can go inspect plants and see how I can better the farmers point of view at plants,” said Newby.

According to a 2020 report by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Purdue University… U.S. college graduates can expect approximately 59-thousand-400 job opportunities in agriculture annually between 2020 and 2025, making it more likely for them to find a good career in AG.

U of A Yuma regional academic programs manager, Tanya Hodges, said the summit will help these students fill the agriculture pipeline when they graduate.

“So students get excited and know what they can study in agriculture because at the end, it’s really about the demand that industry is having in our area and right now we can’t fill the demand that’s needed in the workforce,” explained Hodges.

She says the most demand needed for Yuma AG is for the highly educated and skilled workforce.

“To close the gaps between what’s going on in the student piece, in education, and what industry is needing and demanding, so that we can increase economic development and innovation in our community,” said Hodges.

The vision of the Southwest Agricultural Summit has always been to bring knowledge and innovation to agriculture in the desert regions and continue to make this area known throughout the world for the quality products that are grown here.