Future of Agriculture Graduate Student Competition

On February 7^th 2013, Mississippi State University will host the first annual “Future of Agriculture Graduate Student Competition”. The competition will be open to M.S. and Ph.D. students working in production agriculture. Over the last several years, there has been a tremendous surge in job availability for students with backgrounds in applied production agriculture.  The agricultural industry groups are continuously looking for young talented individuals to employ, and the candidate pool for students with these particular skills is limited.

Our goal for creating the competition is three fold.  First, we want to provide an additional opportunity for our students to speak and present their research to a diverse audience and be judged by farmers, consultants, and industry personnel instead of just academic professionals.  Second, invitations will be extended to all major agricultural companies interested in scouting talented students at Mississippi State University so industry personnel have the opportunity to develop relationships with the students prior to their graduation. Finally, the competition will be multi-disciplinary.  There are very few meetings where students in Weed Science, Entomology, Agronomy, Plant Pathology, etc. actually get to compete against each other.  We believe this will also help the students develop better relationships with each other and foster team building skills.

Many of the organizers have already spoken with agriculture industry groups about this competition and been welcomed with overwhelming support for the idea. We are looking forward to hosting this new event and see potential for tremendous growth opportunities in the future.