Striving Youth

How has the internet affected you and your relationship with global agriculture? What has your generation done with the abundance of knowledge and resulting options it provides?

Not as much as mine… as a 21 year old male living in the United States of America I’m a “millennial”. We are the largest, most diverse generation in the U.S, we value human capital more than any other generation, and we will choose an occupation that we value due to its added benefit to our lives in more than just monetary measures according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Now provide the internet to the group I just described. Also give it to the millions of other millennials spread around the globe.

The result is me. The result is all the other 18 to 34 year old applicants for the GCARD3 Global Event’s Youth Delegation that wish to bring about the change we want to see in our global food predicament and agriculture as a whole.

But why consider me to voice my opinion on the role my peers need to play in agriculture and global development? Because I have the drive to take the abundance of information the internet provides and use it to take action in a holistic manner along with share and inspire my peers through social media. Part of what molded me into an ideal Youth Delegate member is my personal history which would be nothing without agriculture; I was raised on a dairy (had ole’ Betsy cow crush my back and liver once), I’ve worked for local farmers in the great state of Idaho, and have interned at global agribusiness companies. Also I’m a product of the social media age and am currently a Marketing Intern for the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Idaho in charge of our social media platforms and Extension marketing. Additionally I’m in my last year of my bachelors at UIdaho studying Sustainable Cropping Systems and Agribusiness and I am hoping to continue my education with graduate school in International Agricultural Development.

Through the internet the other millennials and I around the world have been able to have intimate contact and exposure with the hunger and thirst throughout it. I realized during my sophomore year in high school while volunteering at a women’s shelter in Washington D.C. through the National FFA Association that helping others and seeing the happiness I can bring to their faces is the “job” I want for the rest of my life and through aiding in the fight for sustainable global agriculture I can accomplish that to the greatest degree. To me that is better than a million dollar yearly salary.

Last fall I meet with an amazing professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has represented the U.S. on the CGIAR’s Commission for Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, Dr. Molly Jahn. Her trust in the fact that I’m headed in the right direction, that I can leave an impact on global agriculture, is what inspired me to apply here and is what is continuing to inspire me to educate myself and prepare for taking this GCARD3 experience into my daily life and my work internationally for aiding villages, regions, countries, and continents in developing sustainable agricultural systems that are economically sound and provide positive utility to all those involved.

And I honestly think I need this experience—the chance to participate at GCARD3—to do that. My career of choice, my job, will be ensuring better rural futures and sustaining the business of farming and if I could take all that I know and voice it at GCARD3 and more importantly sit, listen, and absorb all that the other delegates have to say my hopes and dreams for my own future will become reality. 

This blog post is part of the GCARD3 Youth blogpost applications. The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.