The Feed

Did you know that the ag industry is one of the largest employers in the United States? Agriculture and its related industries provided 21.1 million full- and part-time jobs in 2021 — or 10.5 percent of total U.S. employment! So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that agriculture isn’t just for those seeking careers on farms or ranches. One of the programs I manage in my work at Bayer is Grow Ag Leaders, a Bayer Fund scholarship program, which awards more than $500,000 in scholarships every year. The prospective majors of our 2023 scholarship recipients demonstrate some of the incredibly diverse college majors that feed into the field of agriculture: Animal Breeding and Genetics; Diesel Mechanics; Environmental Engineering; Communications; Welding; Natural Resources Management; Landscape Architecture; Forest Management; Parks, Recreation & Tourism Studies; and many more. One of our recent scholarship recipients perfectly illustrates how a love of agriculture can transform into a promising career. Alaina Gebel from Waukon, Iowa, received a Grow Ag Leaders scholarship in 2023. She is currently a freshman at Iowa State University, [...]