Graduate Bucks National Trend and Goes Back to Agrarian Roots

Brian England, a dual major in agricultural business and soil and crop sciences, is graduating with a 3.73 GPA. He has served as president of FarmHouse fraternity and is a native of the lower Arkansas River Valley, where cantaloupe is king. Notably, England is returning to production agriculture after college. In returning to family farming, England is bucking a trend marked by movement away from our nation’s agrarian roots. Fewer and fewer people are involved in production agriculture in the United States. In fact, farm employment accounts for less than one percent of jobs nationwide. This provokes concern about the health of our rural communities as farmers and ranchers, for a variety of economic and policy reasons, find it increasingly difficult to achieve the economies of scale that often are tied to profits in production agriculture. People committed to farming and ranching, like England, are motivated by the significant challenges of modern agriculture and the desire to uphold rural traditions.

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