Do you make a bigger impact on agriculture in it or on the outside?

If I haven't mentioned it before I really like Twitter. I learn a lot from it and it makes me think. Both of which are good things. Today the question I have been toying with is how do people make the biggest impact on agriculture in terms of their careers.

I personally think there are three job categories that can affect ag. 1. Going back into production agriculture, 2. Working in a agriculture job off the farm (that's me), and 3. Going into a career that actually has nothing to do with agriculture. Today, for brevity I'm going to talk about 1. and 3.

Now some may say that production agriculture is how we have our biggest impact. I commend ever college grad that wants to go back to the farm and play in the dirt and manure. Someone is going to have to feed this world, and you are the people doing it. You have a huge influence on the type and quality of food we eat. You have the ability to decide what practices you feel are the best for our environment, and you get to choose what new technologies agriculture implements. So therefore it could be easily argued that you have the biggest impact.

But, what about all those farm kids and College of Ag grads that never work in agriculture field. They may be nurses, lawyers, a teacher or own a small business, yet they still get the importance of agriculture. These people are around consumers ever day and they have an opportunity to share agriculture's stories everyday. I'm just guessing but the consumer may even relate better to these people, and be more willing to hear their stories, because they feel similar to these individuals.

What if there were a bunch of farm girls turned city gals that could correct every wrong statement they heard coming out of their coworkers mouths when everyone was standing around the water-cooler.

Today I saw a tweet from "@katpinke - The ASPCA woman told me she is a social justice major & this is her summer job. She said all animals should b treated like humans."

I wish there was a farm kid out there that decided he wanted to be a social justice major and wanted to share his experiences with his peers. Maybe he could have straightened this girl out before she thought teaming up with an animal rights activist group was the right idea.

So what do you think. How are you going to make an impact on agriculture?

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