Campus News

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Mandy Gabruch, instructor with the new Agricultural Enterprise Management program, is happy to answer questions about Lethbridge College’s newest program, accepting students for the first time this fall. The program is a unique blend of applied skills and higher-level analysis of industry trends and issues that affect the business of agriculture.

What is the Agricultural Enterprise Management program?

In a nutshell, Ag Enterprise Management is focusing on the business aspects of agriculture. Here at Lethbridge College, we already have expertise in teaching the production and science side of growing food and processing it for consumption, so what this program does is bring in more of the business side of that. It looks at economics, policy, trade, efficiency, the numbers side of things. We’re going to have some production, but we’re going to focus more on the money side. How do we make profit in this? How do we come up with profitable products? How do we market these products?

Do you need a farming background to successfully take the course?

Not at all. That’s a misconception. If you take agriculture, whether it be Agricultural Enterprise Management or the production-focused majors which are more science-based, there are so many jobs in agriculture. The industry is so hungry for people that you don’t need to come from a farming background, and if you get a diploma or degree in agriculture, you don’t necessarily become a farmer. That’s not the single end point. There are tons of jobs out there in a lot of different roles. There are sales jobs, commodity procurement jobs, consulting and advising, working for banks, working for governments. There are tons of opportunities in the industry. It’s an exciting time to get a new program going.

Why is the time so right for this new program?

There’s a massive shortage of labour in agriculture. I suspect some of that’s generational. Baby boomers are retiring. The crop input sector is very strong right now. Farmers are starting to do a lot of their own marketing, largely the result of the wheat board being disbanded. They didn’t have to do that so much in the past. We’re seeing a demand for expertise in that area, advising farmers on how to market their crops to get the most revenue they can from their products. Regardless of the reason, the point is that there are tons of opportunities to start a great career in agriculture and AEM will offer another pathway for students to enter it.

And why is this a great place for this program?

Southern Alberta is very unique in that we’ve got basically the entire supply chain and players in every aspect of it in one place. You’ve got your primary production agriculture, you’ve got your specialty crops which you don’t see in a lot of places, you’ve got processing and you’ve got intermediate feedlots and supply chain players. This program make so much sense here.

How are the courses structured in this new program?

The majority of existing classes come from the School of Business, with a few from the School of Agriculture and with seven brand new courses being developed. The new ones are the heavy ag business focus. The existing business classes will incorporate case studies and examples from agriculture. The new classes I’m working on include ag policy, Canadian and world agriculture which is trade, foundations of agriculture enterprise management which is basically running an agri-business and that management piece, ag sustainability. That’s one we’re developing in co-operation with an instructor from Ag Sciences. It will bring together economics and science. There are two more production-focused classes on plant soils and livestock, and finally, an ag law course.

Is farming really more complex than ever before?

I don’t know if agriculture ever was that simple but people treated it that way. Consumers had very different demands and expectations 75 years ago. It used to be bulk and cheap — the cheapest thing you could buy to feed your family used to be the priority. That’s not the case anymore. Consumers want food with all sorts of different attributes. A lot of those attributes are related all the way back to how that product was produced. That’s where we see the antibiotic free, hormone free, the organic, the humanely raised, the sustainably sourced. Consumers today want to know where their food came from and how it was produced. So we’re seeing this really interesting challenge of how you make the supply chain link up. The supply chain used to look like one big pipe. You push all your product into this generic pipeline, it got to the consumers and they bought it. It was the cheapest and most efficient way to get it. Now we have to see different branches, different pipelines and smaller supply chains. It’s a challenge in the industry to basically restructure how we get food from the farm to the plate. That’s where a lot of the complexity comes in.

But there are also issues of trade. That brings in a whole other slew of regulatory issues. There’s the logistics of getting products from Canada to a market overseas and getting through borders and different regulations.

Going forward I think it’s only getting to get more complicated and more regulated and we’re going to have more public stakeholders involved. We’re just on the cusp of big industry changes that are going to come.

Farming is often passed down from generation to generation. Will there be pushback to the program from students who say “that’s not the way my parents and grandparents did it”?

I think that’s going to happen. I teach commodity marketing for example, using futures markets to hedge to help you secure a better price for your crops. It’s very common in the United States. Up here, very few farmers are familiar with it. Students will say “why do I need to learn this? We don’t do that.” When we get into the policy information, there are a lot of hot button topics in there. I want to create that mental framework for them to look at these issues objectively, analytically, to say this is the cause and this is the effect. You don’t want to forfeit a business opportunity. I’m saying think about it objectively, crunch some numbers. Think about what this would mean in terms of your cost and your revenue. Just think analytically, not emotionally.

For the small family farms, is there benefit for them as well to participate in the new program?

The fact it’s a family business means it is very beneficial. Often it’s the business side that tends to be deficient. Farmers are really good at farming. Chances are you’re pretty familiar with production and what works and what doesn’t work. Chances are you’re not super familiar with accounting and marketing and finance and business plans and economics. They’re just as important as growing crops.

What is the difference between the existing Agricultural Sciences program and the new Agricultural Enterprise Management program?

The Agricultural Sciences program is production and science focused. AEM is business focused. For example, when looking at a routine decision for producers, such as seeding rate, what AEM will do is look at two different seeding rates, compare the costs and compare the yield potentials and decide which would be a more profitable decision, looking at the business side. The Ag Sciences side would consider the production side alone where maximum yield is typically the key decision factor.

For more information on the Agricultural Enterprise Management diploma program or to register, visit us online, call 403-320-3213 or email us.