Agriculture is not a new scientific field - it is as old as most of recorded history. It was one of the major factors in the development of human society as we understand it today. But agriculture is not glamorous or elegant. It often gets forgotten as an academic pursuit. Once an acquaintance asked me what I was going to grad school for, when I replied “Horticulture” he said “I didn’t even know you could go to school for that”. So why then would a person choose to immerse themselves in agriculture? The answer is not as simple as you might think.
Many people choose agriculture as a career
due to family history (myself included); some come for the love of food and others
come for the prospect of lucrative jobs. But all people who work in the agricultural
field have one common trait: they are hooked. Some are born with the
infatuation - most likely because their parents were hooked. Some others get hooked
at a young age and others later in life. But once you’re hooked on agriculture,
there is no way to shake it. Why the infatuation is so strong has never been
clear to me. Maybe it has to do the fresh air or the feeling of
self-sustainability or possibly the taming of the landscape. I have seen people
from all disciplines fall into the grips of agriculture: engineers,
psychologists, linguists, medical doctors and the list goes on. No one is safe.
My own personal infatuation started very early in life. Being the son of two
horticulturists, you stand very little chance of escaping it. This has driven
me from a small town in Newfoundland to one of the oldest and most respected
agricultural colleges in North America, and still the infatuation grows. That’s
the other thing, people with the infatuation must constantly consume more
knowledge - how to grow better and faster with less inputs on less land. Soon
your days are consumed with fertilizer regiments and developmental stages.
All joking aside, it is not an infatuation in
agriculture that seduces people, it is passion. Few academic fields combine the
social, political and scientific aspects of life in the same way that agriculture
does. As I said from the start, agriculture is deeply intertwined into not only
human society but the human conscious, to form a strange symbiosis. And while my analogy to any infatuation is
meant for entertainment, it is not so far from the truth. For example, my
elderly grandfather passed away recently, and his biggest worry before he died
was that he was no longer able to plant dahlia bulbs. This is a man who had had
multiple surgeries, was taking medication and was finding it hard to move
around, and his main concern was that he was unable to get his horticultural
fix.
In the end, I think it’s the nobility of agriculture that draws people in
- it is truly the creation of something from nothing. Most, if not all farmers, be their operations
large or small are dedicated hard workers, who eat and sleep agriculture. These
people produce the food the world lives on and for the most part are largely
forgotten by the general public for providing it. It is this un-thanked
dedication that truly defines agriculture and the people who work in it, be
they academics or producers, and it is that feeling, that way of life, that
provides the passion that makes agriculture so addictive.
“For
of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing
more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture” ~ Marcus
Tullius Cicero
By James Dawson
Grad Student
