High school seniors are typically looking toward future career possibilities at this time of year. The sheer number and variety of careers in the agricultural sector of the economy might come as a shock. Erika Osmundson is Director of Marketing Communications with AgCareers.com. She says they posted a whole lot of job opportunities in 2019.
“Last year, we posted 50,000 open positions within agriculture on the site. While production agriculture is key to the world, there is more to agriculture in terms of careers than production, that ‘cows, plows, and sows’ is what we always say.”
The career options in the Ag sector are both blue collar and white-collar jobs.
“Sales and marketing always tend to do quite well. We do a lot of agronomy and research. Animal health is always a good area and tends to have a lot of opportunities. And then, when you look at what really entices young folks to get excited, I think we really have to play up all the technologies growing and evolving within the industry.”
Like most other sectors in the economy, the Ag sector is seeing an explosive growth in technology careers, which is creating demand for a lot of skilled workers.
“The Ag-Tech sector is huge when you start looking at GPS, drone technology, the plant genetics side, some of the traceability stuff. There are just opportunities for a new variety of people. Software developers, IT, process engineers, that type of thing. So, it’s really just expanding.”
AgCareers.com, in conjunction with the Farm Service Agency, put together profiles of more than 250 agricultural careers on the site, just to help career-seekers better understand what was out there in agriculture. Those profiles talk about things like responsibilities with each position, what the future holds for a particular job, and some of the profiles even deal with salaries. She says the salaries for agricultural positions may come as a surprise to some job seekers.
“Even some of those skilled trade jobs, we’re seeing those salary levels continue to rise, just because of the demand. Even in some of those traditional ones where people might not think that the salary would be good, they’re mistaken. But then, you look at some of the business-focused type of roles, the IT, the finance, we’re competitive with other industry sectors out there, and we work in a pretty great industry that’s pretty viable, I mean, we’re even seeing this through the COVID pandemic.”
Agriculture has been deemed an “essential service” by government officials, which means most of the people in the sector can continue to go to work and maintain their careers.. Osmundson says that means the demand for skilled workers is going to be there for the long term.
Lanesboro alum Eric Holst is a two-time national champion in the Hammer/Weight Throw and finished as a runner-up in this year’s hammer throw event at the NCAA Division Three Track and Field Championships. (Contributed photo)
Track and field has been very good to Lanesboro alum Eric Holst. He’s a three-time All-American track athlete at St. Thomas University. He’s a two-time national champion, winning the Hammer Throw (outdoor season) as a junior and the Weight Throw (indoor season) as a senior. Holst wound up taking second in the Hammer Throw at this year’s National Division Three Track and Field Championship Meet. Holst said he was initially disappointed that he couldn’t repeat in the top spot but second was still a great way to finish up his college track career.
Runner Up
“It’s second place in the nation and very few people will ever reach that in their athletic lives,” Holst said. “It’s still a great thing and I still get All-American honors. However, I still wanted to win. I don’t know a single athlete that wouldn’t want to hit that mark. It came down to one throw that didn’t go my way.
Lanesboro’s Eric Holst qualified for the NCAA Division Three National Track and Field Championship Meet in both the hammer throw and the discus. He finished as the runner-up in the hammer throw. (Contributed Photo)
“My first throw of the meet was technically sound (60.90 meters),”
Holst recalled, “it just felt soft, not full-go. However, that put me into the
finals, which meant I was All-American. I told myself at that point ‘now we can
push it.’ I attacked my second throw too hard and let go one turn too early in
order to save the mark. Still, that throw put me into second place (61.69
meters).”
Holst said he couldn’t find the rhythm again and wound up
scratching on his next four throws. The senior thrower either hit the net with
the hammer or stepped out of the launch area. The only two throws he hit all
meet were the first two attempts. “I just couldn’t find it again,” he said.
However, it wasn’t just Holst that lost his rhythm.
Zak Dysert of Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio wound up as the national champion in this year’s hammer throw. He had a couple of scratches and poor throws during his earlier attempts. However, Holst said Dysert ‘pulled it together as I should have’ and won it on his last throw (62.01 meters). Converting meters to feet shows just how close the competition turned out to be. Dysert’s best throw totaled 203 feet, 5 inches. Holst’s best throw was one-inch shy of that mark at 202-05.
A Big Change
Holst made a big change in his training last year that carried over to this season. He switched up his throwing form last year as a junior. He went from spinning three times before releasing the hammer/weight to four times. It took some time to get used to, but Holst was feeling good about the adjustment by the end of last season. This season, it took a little longer to find the rhythm during his senior year.
“Switching from three rotations to four give you more time to accelerate ahead of the throw,” Holst explained. “If you’re a very explosive athlete, three turns are generally all you need. I’m not as explosive as many other competitors are, so that fourth turn to build up more speed can help me even the field quite a bit.”
Training Harder
In addition to changing his throwing form, Holst also changed his in-season training regimen. “I trained a lot harder during the season and attempted a lot more throws in practice,” Holst recalled. “The hope was that I could break down my body a little more during the season in hopes of building up to a stronger peak by the end of the year. I cut back on the number of throws as I got to the meets where they give out titles, trying to be a little bit fresher at that point of the season.”
Because it’s a throwing event, strength is obviously
important if athletes want to be competitive. However, Holst says technique
plays an even bigger part in success. “I think it’s the most technically-driven
event in all of track and field,” he said.
“You mainly see that when you go from high school track up to the college level,” Holst said. “At the lower level of competition, you’ll see big guys that win by simply outmuscling the other competitors. However, when you get up here, you’ll notice that people aren’t quite as big as they were down below. They realize it takes more than just brute strength to compete in the throwing events. Everyone is strong, so it boils down to technique.”
Eric Holst of Lanesboro is one of the more successful Burros when it comes to collegiate sports. He’s a two-time national champ in the hammer/weight throw and a runner-up in the hammer throw at this year’s national meet. (Contributed photo)
Holst is quick to credit his coaches for pushing him to be better every day, both at practice and during competitions. However, they won’t be pushing him anymore as his St. Thomas track career ended after the Outdoor National Meet. Looking back over his four-year career, it’s been interesting to remember how things developed.
On to New Things
“It really hit me hard this year that I’m done with college
track,” he recalled. “I struggled with it for a few days. I remember back in my
freshman year when we had a thrower that placed ninth at the national meet. We
looked up to him like a god because he was one spot away from being an
All-American. A spot in the national meet seemed so unattainable that we
thought he was a ‘freak athlete.’
“It’s funny to look back and think about how I’ve made the
same level of competition as that ‘freak athlete’ back then,” Holst added.
“It’s kind of wild to think that I did it too, especially when I think about my
freshman season and what we had thought was so unattainable.”
What will he miss the most about college track? It boils
down to one word: routine.
“I’ve been used to going to class and going to track
practice for the last ten years, going all the way back to middle school,”
Holst says. “Now, there’s no more practice at all. It’s off to the workforce,
which is a whole different routine to learn.”
There’s a new sport coming this month to Rushford-Peterson school and it doesn’t involve any kind of ball, hockey puck, or brand-new bat. It’s called competitive robotics and it’s a real thing. The new sport is coming to Rushford-Peterson school for the first time, thanks to second-year science teacher Mike Mulholland.
Students in competitive robotics work during the season as a team to build a robot. The kids are assigned a “task” for the robot to do, such as shoot a basketball. The robot that performs the task the best wins the competition. (photo from NPR.org)
Minnesota saw its first two high school competitive robotics teams compete back in 2006. That number has grown rapidly in recent years. The competitive robotics competition involves teams building robots to complete specific tasks that are different every year. Past tasks including building a robot to do everything from shoot a basketball to throwing a frisbee. All teams work on the same assigned task during their season.
“We’re going to get started on Saturday, Jan 5,” he said.
“We pick up the building kits and get the information on what game they’re
doing this year. We get a new game (objective) every year. The overall theme
for this year is ‘Space Exploration.’ The competition is set up with rules,
ways to score points, and we have to design a robot that will be best able to
score points and win the match.
“This year’s competition is called ‘Deep Space,’” he said. “Teams
will be competing in groups of two alliances of three to apply security hatches
and fill cargo bays to both rockets and a cargo ship before time runs out.
There is a beginning section of 15 seconds that requires teams to control their
robot by either automation or onboard camera. After the first section, teams
freely control their robots for 2 minutes, 15 seconds. After time runs out,
points will be counted and the team with the highest score wins that round.”
He said it’s hard to describe what the robot will look like.
The finished product typically has four wheels, as well as different mechanisms
that can grab on to or lift something, helping it to perform a specific task.
“Each competitive robotics competition usually has six teams that are going at the same time,” he said. “There are three robots on each side, one is ours and the other two from the team we partner with. They’ll switch up teams for each match, so our partners in one match could be opponents in a future one, and vice versa.”
“We’ll find out what it’s like when we go to a local competition over in La Crosse (Wisconsin), in April” he added. “We’ll be competing with a number of other schools coming in from all over the region. There’s also a Minnesota state tournament coming up, too. It’s run by the Minnesota State High School League.”
Here’s a fantastic example of what a robotics competition looks like:
The one big challenge to robotics participation is the cost. Equipment kits can run several thousands of dollars. Many schools around the state rely on sponsors to help defray the cost. Mulholland said the R-P Competitive Robotics Club would love to have some area sponsors of their own to make it easier to participate in what’s been a growing sport around the state as well as across the nation.
“Because of the cost of the kits, there are a number of
opportunities for sponsorships by different organizations,” Mulholland said.
“We actually have a couple of sponsorships already. We also got a $ 6000 grant
from NASA to help pay for the fee from First Robotics (the organization behind
the robotics league). We also have some other organizations that have pledged
support and financial aid.”
The kits that they pick up before the season contain the
same basic parts. They can buy or build additional parts, but that’s where
sponsorships come in to help defray some of the extra cost.
Mulholland is excited for the first season of robotics
competition. Both students and administration officials wanted to get this
program off the ground. He’s already had several meetings with interested
students to get the robotics program organized. Mulholland says there are
between 12 and 15 kids between seventh and twelfth grades that seem to be
serious about the activity.
“I was student-teaching at Southland, and they had a
robotics program,” he said. “However, It was a different program than the one
we’re involved in at Rushford-Peterson. I helped out with that a little and
that’s where I got interested. It’s my first kind of go-around with a program
like this, so I’ll be learning right there with the kids.”
The Seven Rivers Regional Robotics Competition is April 4 through April 7, in La Crosse.
Here’s a neat video that the Edina, Minnesota high school robotics teams put together last year talking about the impact that robotics can make at the high school level.
