Report: many skilled agriculture jobs, not enough workers
Juan Gonzalez, operations manager for Lakeside Organic Gardens, inspects an organic celery crop Tuesday at the Monterey Bay Academy farm.
In a six-acre celery field on the outskirts of Watsonville Tuesday, Lakeside Organic Gardens Operations Manager Juan Gonzalez was checking rows of plants. The celery will be ready for harvest no later than Monday, he said.
But as farmers across the U.S. ramp up for harvest season, they are also desperately looking for college graduates to join the industry.
That’s according to a report released May 11 by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Purdue University. There is an average of 35,400 new U.S. graduates with a bachelor’s degree or higher in agriculture related fields to fill an estimated 60,000 high-skilled agriculture jobs.
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