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Farm Technology Days adds ag career event

Wisconsin’s largest annual farm show hosted their first career day for youth, to highlight the opportunities they have for careers in agriculture.

It’s the first time Farm Technology Days has put together a career day.  “Pioneer Pete” Curran tells Brownfield 36 different schools from Wisconsin and Illinois brought FFA-aged students. “We gave them a cow ear tag and then we put an RFID button on it, and we gave them a clue sheet of sixteen different stops that are totally different career opportunities, and when the got to the stop, they had to answer a career takeaway question.”

Curran says the students from rural and urban schools were exposed to many potential careers in agriculture. “Live steer sitting right there. Let’s look at some real meat growing on a steer. Then at the opposite end, we had a Lely milking robot to show that you may just need to know computer tech. In the middle, we had ag finance. We had a co-op to show how those organizations are set up.”

Curran says next year’s Farm Technology Days committee is looking at making Career Day an annual part of the show.