Agronomists In An Expanding World.

As international development projects expand globally, career opportunities for agronomy professionals are correspondingly expanding, offering exciting new positions which demand the enhanced skills of “generalists”.  In addition to competence in a specialty in agronomy, the professional agronomist must also acquire an understanding of the perspectives, roles, and interests of other diverse disciplines, such as health sciences, education, finance, environmental quality, and the social sciences.  This comfort with other disciplines allows the agronomist to interact with and potentially lead interdisciplinary teams of professionals with converging goals.  A generalist agronomist could work with interdisciplinary teams to make sustainable impacts on rural on-site problems, here and, importantly, abroad.  Agronomists educated as generalists can assume such roles as ministers of planning, United Nations country directors, and work with private sector companies or foundations as advisors on sustainability and development programs.

The role of agronomists as central assets to collaborative, interdisciplinary teams should also be integrated into the training and role modeling of agronomy students, who will then desire to become proficient in their specialty areas of graduate study, as well as create diverse professional liaisons, and begin to consider novel approaches to solving problems such as sustainability through a comfort with interdisciplinary teams.  The shift from specialist to a generalist requires specific and dedicated efforts in graduate training.  Agronomy academic programs must bring together students and faculty from other academic areas that have relevant interests and skills, and invite those with global experience to lead interactive learning experiences.  For example, participants (students and faculty) could be divided into small, interdisciplinary groups to solve problems posed by the group leader, with each discipline focusing on how their contribution interplays and enhances that of others.  In terms of hands-on, real life opportunities for acquiring generalist skills, opportunities should be available for conducting thesis or dissertation work overseas, ideally with an interdisciplinary perspective, and after introduction to the concept of the agronomist as generalist. Only by agronomist specialists changing their perspectives will they meet the skill sets needed to not only expand and enhance their careers, but to use their skills to make the best possible impacts to alleviate hunger and make lasting changes in diverse societies.