Agriculture companies have lots of job openings in STEM fields, far from the farm

Agriculture companies are looking for people who are interested in science, and hiring managers are increasingly looking for people who don’t have traditional ag backgrounds.
Jobs in agriculture don’t just take place on the farm.

Across the Midwest, plant science and ag companies are looking for scientists and others in STEM to fill positions in labs, or in front of computers, that may not fit the traditional image of agriculture.

“When people meet folks that work in the ag industry, they're often shocked about what they actually do for a living,” said Kim Kidwell, the associate chancellor of Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a former dean of the School of Agriculture. “There's a lot of engineering, there's a lot of business, there's a lot of computer science.”