CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Brandon Foxx had no connection to agriculture while growing up in Lexington, Kentucky.
“It never crossed my mind,” said Foxx, who is active duty military.
But he started working in human resources for Farm Credit a month ago. Now he is “intrigued,” wanting to know more about the industry, and he hopes to bridge the gap for others who might find unexpected opportunities in agriculture.
To that end, he was a representative at the career exhibits at the Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences Leadership Institute event in Champaign March 24.
Speakers share ideas about the varied career options in agriculture and other fields at the Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS) Leadership Institute event March 24.
“I’ve never been on a farm,” Foxx said. Now working for Farm Credit he has the chance to join its “Ag University” program to learn more. It includes visiting ag businesses and meeting farmers on their farms.
At another booth, Briana Hawryluk, originally from Miami, Florida, holds up plastic bacon and chicken drumsticks to tell students about her job at Tyson.
Foxx and Hawryluk are among the people who had never considered ag careers, but they have found their niche. They chatted with about 200 high school students at the two-day Junior MANRRS event in Champaign. The event included workshops, guest speakers and career exhibits.
While 40,000 students are enrolled in agriculture education in Illinois, many schools don’t offer ag classes or FFA. The beauty of MANRRS is that it is a club which can be led by science, math or other teachers and doesn’t require an agriculture program at the school. Students with any interest in science and technology can join and be exposed to a whole new slate of opportunities, said Dean Dittmar, facilitating coordinator of ag education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which helped host the event.
Just as other programs have inspired more women to find careers in agriculture, Junior MANRRS fosters diversity to bring new ideas and points of view into the ag community, Dittmar said.
The leaders themselves reflect diverse backgrounds. Ian Smith took an unlikely route of majoring in pharmacy studies at Purdue University and Kansas State University before eventually becoming the national Junior MANRRS coordinator working with junior-high and high school students. He switched from working crime scenes using insect entomology in forensics to teaching and inspiring youths.
Early on, attending a national MANRRS conference got him hooked on the program, he said.
“People look like you and have similar interests. It is a family atmosphere,” he said.
In his workshop, students were on their feet participating from the get-go.
Today there are 2,500 active members with 85% of them being students, Smith said.
He told the high schoolers there’s plenty of money available for students studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects. He encouraged them to seek scholarships and opportunities.
FFA, MANRRS and other ag programs are growing in Illinois, in part because of financial support. There are line items in the Illinois budget making it possible. Illinois sees this as a priority, but that isn’t the case in every state, Dittmar said.
The event included brainstorming sessions for teachers. A team of teachers from Decatur Public Schools worked together to plan MANRRS activities for Eisenhower and McArthur high schools. They created activities to help their students match their interests with opportunities in agriculture. Their students often don’t have any experience with traditional agriculture, they said.
For one student, a blue jacket hanging in his mom’s closet initially sparked an interest that led him here today.
“I’m originally from Springfield, not from the best neighborhood,” Camden Downers said.
When the family moved to Decatur, also not to the best of neighborhoods, he happened to see some kids at school wearing similar blue jackets to his mom’s.
“I thought they looked cool,” he said. Joining those FFA blue jackets was his introduction to agriculture.
Soon he was active in FFA, competing and winning in a variety of categories. He hopes to be presented with the coveted State FFA degree at the annual Illinois FFA state convention in Springfield this June.
He naturally got involved in MANRRS as well as FFA when the opportunity arose at his Decatur school, and he is active in both.
Downers now expects to be like his mom who works in agriculture as a Case-IH farm equipment sales representative. He hopes to become an ag teacher.
Standing in front of the University of Illinois banner, the high schooler sees himself starting at Richland College, graduating from the Urbana-Champaign university and eventually inspiring other high schoolers about ag-related opportunities.
