In my last blog post, I introduced you to my friend, Josiah, who is a dairy farmer in British Columbia. Josiah and I met during our time at Olds College, where we both studied agricultural management. During our interview for his blog debut, we had a lengthy conversation about education for farmers, and I would now like to share with you the portion that, due to the length of the post, did not previously make it to publishing.
After graduating from high school, Josiah made the decision to further his education. When asked for the reason behind that decision, he replied that he wanted to "grow my knowledge for not only just agriculture, but business as well. I think that was kind of the big thing for me...There are certain things that are really easy to learn on the farm and other things that are possibly better learned in a classroom. I mean, experience teaches you so many things, but it's good to have some head knowledge going in, so that's why I'd say I went to college."
As previously mentioned, Josiah chose to attend Olds College for his post-secondary education. I'm always curious to know why people come to Olds from other provinces, so I asked Josiah, "Why Olds?" He referenced the good reputation that Olds College has as a top agricultural school in western Canada. He had received good recommendations from others who had attended the college in the past, including his dad. Josiah says, "I definitely don't regret going there...It's not perfect, but they lived up to their reputation."
Josiah had a bit of difficulty pinpointing the one most useful thing he learned in school (in all fairness, it wasn't an easy question to answer), but he did pick out a few things that he found useful. He mainly talked about the practical, hands-on things he learned, such as agronomy and communications. Josiah spent his third year at Olds studying agricultural mechanics, so he has found that to be very useful as well. Since Josiah has not taken over the farm, these hands-on things that help with his immediate work on the farm are currently most useful to him. Looking to the future, Josiah can see that the financial and business training will also come in handy.
Of course, one can't learn everything about farming simply by attending even the most prestigious agricultural school. Outside of school, Josiah says that the most useful things he has learned has been working with animals: "That's something that, it's hard to learn if you don't actually get the experience. So that's been sort of one of the biggest things that is just, for us on the dairy farm, it's a day-to-day thing. You're always working with cows, moving cows. If you know how they think, then you can move them and work with them a lot more efficiently. So that's probably the most useful thing when the rubber meets the road for me as a dairy farmer."
I so enjoyed speaking to Josiah about his education. I have written before about my own views on the necessity of education for young farmers, but I always like to hear of the opinions and experiences of others. I hope you, my readers, have also learned a bit about the importance of education and how experience is also key in the training of a young farmer.
I so enjoyed speaking to Josiah about his education. I have written before about my own views on the necessity of education for young farmers, but I always like to hear of the opinions and experiences of others. I hope you, my readers, have also learned a bit about the importance of education and how experience is also key in the training of a young farmer.
