Tag: marketing

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Careers continue to grow across the Ag sector

careers

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.

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Coronavirus headlines disrupt commodities

Here’s the complete conversation with Arlan Suderman of INTL FCStone on the commodity markets reaction to the coronavirus outbreak.

Coronavirus headlines and the commodity markets. It’s been a while since we’ve seen the commodity markets this reactive to news headlines on an almost daily basis. While it’s not unheard of, one commodity expert says it’s been over a decade since the markets have been hit this hard by the news. Arlan Suderman is the Chief Commodities Analyst for INTL FCStone, talks about why the news coronavirus headlines seem to be playing havoc in the commodity markets.

“I think that’s a question a lot of people have these days,” Suderman says. “It’s a valid point to discuss.

Coronavirus
Arlan Suderman, Chief Commodities Analyst at INTL FCStone says the commodity markets have been hit hard by news reports surrounding the coronavirus, as well as the resulting “fear outbreak” from people all over the world.

“I was initially downplaying the market reaction in January,” he recalled, “before doing some research at the end of that month. This is the type of virus that’s going to trigger a lot of fear in people. When you have that much fear, the fear of the coronavirus headlines will be worse than the threat of the virus itself.”

He points out that when people get afraid, they stay home, they don’t travel, and they don’t go out in public as much. That’s been the case in China as everywhere the disease has hotspot outbreaks, everybody stays home.

“Shanghai, a city of millions of people, is now a ghost town,” Suderman said. “Now we’re seeing pictures of that in lots of other places, including Italy.

“When people stay home and don’t go out, they tend to consume less food,” he added. “That includes consuming less meat and a lot more starches. Overall, it does tend to change consumption patterns a lot.”

People also consume less energy in these situations as they aren’t driving a lot while airlines are also canceling flights as people don’t want to travel. Less consumption in the energy markets hurts the biofuels markets as well.

Even things like shipping commodities get much more complicated as people are staying home, thanks to the coronavirus headlines. That’s been the case in China and is becoming prevalent in other countries too.

“People didn’t show up to work,” he said. “Ports become congested, ships don’t get unloaded, and shipping slows way down. That’s lost demand you likely don’t get back. You may get some of it back, but not all.