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Ideas for Agricultural Essays

Agricultural Essay

Students in the field of agriculture may struggle with finding essay topics and then writing essays on them, particularly as they first begin their courses. While one can buy essays online, topics ideas must be written on ones own.   Although topic ideas will surely be easier to come by as time goes on, a bit of help with getting started can go a long way in inspiring new ideas. Here we will take a look at essay ideas for the three main types of essay.

Informative

An informative essay can be an easy beginning for students who are still building their writing confidence. Informative essays simply seek to educate the reader on any given topic, typically without taking a side or promoting a specific agenda or position. For example, an informative essay on Genetically Modified Crops (GMOs) would simply lay out what GMO crops hope to achieve and how they are designed. An informative essay on this topic might give an overview of the case for and against using these crops, but would not itself argue in favor of or against their use. Other topics for informative essays include:

  • The History of Commercial Agriculture
  • How the Dust Bowl Storms Shaped the Future of Commercial Farming
  • How Pesticides Help and Hinder the Future of Farming
  • Vertical Farming – Why the Future of Agriculture is Literally on the Rise

Argumentative

As their name suggests, argumentative essays take a firm stand on a topic and entice the reader to think critically about their own opinions as well as challenge current or conventional thinking. This type of essay is especially popular with those who were ‘born to debate’ and can be fun to write but must be written with diplomacy in mind. Controversial topics can be approached, but any opinion you offer should be backed up with facts and presented in a well written and cohesive manner. Some popular topics for this type of essay include

  • The Link Between GMOs and Declining Health
  • Does Organic Agriculture Increase Class Warfare?
  • Corporate Agriculture – Killing a Way of Life or Changing the Face of Farming?
  • Commercialized Farming and the Loss of Biodiversity

Speculative / Expository

The third type of essay is a mixture of the first two and results in How-To essays as well as speculation on the future based on a current situation. Given the current trends in agriculture, some hot topics for this final type of essay are

  • How GMOs Might Affect Future Populations
  • The Future of Grass Roots Farming Initiatives
  • Old School Techniques vs Cutting Edge Research – Which Style of Farming is Actually More Sustainable?

The Best Agricultural Colleges

Agricultural College

The field of agriculture continues to grow and evolve. As a result, many universities have started to focus on offering a huge range of agricultural courses which work side by side with other biological engineering disciplines in order to offer students the chance to address serious global problems. These include world hunger, food and fiber crop sustainability and emerging research in nutrition. This list of the Top 5 colleges shows the current state of the field of agriculture as well as where it’s headed.

Clonakilty Agricultural College

Clonakilty Agricultural College objective is to develop young people and through them to improve the adoption of products, processors and systems to improve farm incomes. Its education and training programmes have been benchmarked to the best international standards and are nationally accredited thereby providing the opportunity for progression to third level qualifications.

The objectives are achived through training programmes, which include:

  • National Certificate in Agriculture (HETAC)
  • Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture (HETAC)
  • National Vocational Certificate in Agriculture (FETAC)
  • Part-time courses on Rural Development and I.T.

Texas A&M University

As a university, Texas A&M has publicly set out what it considers to be the Five Grand Challenges facing the world:

  • Feeding our world
  • Protecting our environment
  • Improving our health
  • Enriching our youth
  • Growing our economy

With these Grand Challenges in mind, the curriculum at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences focuses on using current farming techniques and researching emerging agricultural technologies to address each challenge in turn. Their program has been acknowledged as one of the best by ranking officials such as the QS University Ranking System as well as maintaining the state’s premier research facility through their AgriLife Research program.

University of Wisconsin – Madison

The College of Agricultural and Life Science at the University of Wisconsin is more commonly known simply as UW-CALS and is the home to 19 academic departments and two dozen different undergraduate majors. According to the National Research Council, 10 UW-CALS programs appear in the top 15 percent of national doctoral programs. These programs include:

  • Biochemistry
  • Plant breeding and genetics
  • Nutritional sciences
  • Forestry

UW-CALS alumni have also been singled out for Nobel prize awards and are members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cornell University

Cornell is often listed as one of the top schools in the country, but many people don’t realize it has a stellar agricultural program. While the Cornell program also focuses on the future of agriculture, it anchors its curriculum, goals and focus around sustainability. Well known for its mathematics, law and business offerings, Cornell extends those disciplines into its Agricultural College by finding ways in which sustainable agricultural can support positive economic, social and societal growth.

University of California, Davis

The Agricultural and Forestry program at the University of California, Davis has been ranked as ‘the best of its kind’ internationally and the university has also received a national First Ranking in

  • Agricultural sciences
  • Food science & nutrition
  • Agriculture / Agronomy
  • Plant and animal science
  • Entomology
  • Soil science
  • Environment / Ecology

The University maintains more than 2,500 acres of land for teaching and research and has more than 300 faculty members, 5,300 undergraduates (20% of the overall enrollment in the school) and over 1,000 graduate students working in nearly fifty groups and programs. Their research focuses on new and innovative ways for agriculture to continue to better society while evolving to meet the unique demands and challenges of the future.

The Importance of Agricultural Education

Agricultural Education

In an age where technologically driven careers have taken center stage, many people are left wondering whether or not agricultural education is still important. In fact, careers in agriculture have become increasingly important as people work to find ways to grow better quality food in more versatile ways. We can also notice the increase of students in various agricultural disciplines. After all, agricultural education is more than simply learning how to grow food or plant based textiles. Agricultural education also encompasses:

  • food and fiber production
  • marketing and education (domestic and international)
  • policy making
  • using technology and scientific research to help agriculture
  • food and fiber processing
  • Agribusiness (management and marketing)
  • urban planning

Understanding how agriculture can help increase food production, improve textile processing and work to combat issues such as domestic and world hunger places agricultural education at the forefront of today’s global issues and concerns.

Considering how multifaceted agricultural education is, it comes as a surprise to many to learn that this type of education can be started in early childhood. Small children can help to tend gardens and learn the basics of gardening and food production. In 2007, the Long Beach Unified School District made headlines when it introduced a 22-bed garden at the Los Cerritos Elementary School. Since then the project has helped to teach thousands of children the basics of gardening for personal use as well as the foundations for larger-scale agricultural projects.

Many times, agricultural education is discussed in terms of making students agriculturally literate. This means learning more than simply the basics, but building upon that to promote agriculture as a sustainable way of life both for farmers and the general public. Framing agriculture education as a way to help deal with modern problems gives students of all ages the chance to see that they are able to make a significant – and positive – impact on the world.

With a renewed focus on “green living”, agriculture has enjoyed new found interest and popularity as movements such as “Grow Food Not Farms” and “Real Farmacy” have captured the spirit and imagination of a new generation. Current estimates place pressure on agriculture to develop ways to feed more than 9 billion by the year 2050 which has made agricultural education more vital and important than ever before.

Agricultural Courses: What Courses to Choose

agriculture-course

Careers in agriculture have become increasingly diversified as the field itself rises to various challenges. The roles of agricultural students and professionals has been expanded to include everything from the role it plays in battling world hunger to ways nutrition can help prevent or even cure chronic illness. As a result, many students just entering the field find themselves overwhelmed by agricultural course choices. Here we’ll take a look at the best ways to find the courses to fit in with your academic and career goals.

If You Want to Feed the World

The most common career choice in the world of agriculture is the most traditional: farming and food or fiber production. With a projected population of more than 9 billion by 2050, the pressure is on for this generation of agricultural students to find new and innovative ways to plan, plant and produce. For students who want to focus on tackling this challenge, courses in responsible and sustainable farming, crop preservation, irrigation technology and advancement as well as courses in livestock and animal care.

Finding Ways to Heal the World

Another emerging area of agriculture is general nutrition. While this has often been more associated with healthcare, a renewed interest in farming practices and how they impact nutrition has given rise to a whole new crop of students. These students want to understand how food can heal, literally from the ground up. By analyzing the foundation of soil science, pesticides, bug control and crop preservation, students strive to find ways to produce crops that are healthy for the public as well as being hardy enough to grow on a large scale.

Agribusiness: The Corporate World of Agriculture

Finally, we have ‘Agribusiness’ which encompasses everything from commercial marketing and production to researching the ways in which science may be able to bolster food or fiber production. Courses in agricultural policy and law, economics, methodology and emerging research can all help students who want to be a part of one of the most diverse and forward thinking areas of agriculture.

These specialized courses should be considered in addition to the basics of agriculture which can be found in basic courses that de3al with topics such as

  • Agricultural Systems
  • Soil Science
  • Basic Principles of Animal Husbandry
  • Understanding Markets and Products

While courses titles on these subjects may vary from university to university, these basic primers on agriculture can help lay the groundwork for success no matter what specific field you choose to specialize in.