Sustainable Agribusiness

What you will learn

• Agricultural Growth and Productivity Analysis
• Sustainable Agrifood Supply Chain Management
• Global Agri-food, Livestock, and Crop Systems Solution
• Agricultural Economic Modeling Tools
• Environmental and Natural Resources Economics
• Food Futures and Market
• An average of nearly 60,000 high-skilled ag and related job openings are expected annually in the United States over the next five years, with only about 35,000 grads in food, ag, renewable resources or the environment graduating each year to fill them,
• Between 2015-2020, an average 26,700 annual jobs openings, or nearly half of the total predicted, will be available in mgmt and business within the food, ag and related segments: ag loan officers, farm labor and marketing specialists, land use managers.
• Within the next five years there will be about 8,500 jobs in sustainable food and biomaterials production they will make up an estimated 15 percent out of the total 27 percent new jobs in agriculture. (cnbc.com)
• Median Annual Salary (2015) $64,170 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Program Overview

The Sustainable Agriculture MicroMasters program provides you the knowledge to create a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity. Its fundamental purpose is to help you meet current societal needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

You will learn that sustainable agriculture is more than a collection of sustainable agriculture methods and practices. It is also a process of negotiation: a push and pull between the sometimes competing interests of an individual farmer, a community, a nation, or geo-political groups as they work to solve complex problems about how to grow crops and livestock.

As a practitioner of sustainable agriculture — manager, grower, food processor, distributor, retailer, consumer, waste manager, or policymaker — the Sustainable Agriculture MicroMasters program will equip you to play a role in ensuring a sustainable agricultural system. A systems perspective is essential to understanding sustainability and implies interdisciplinary efforts.

You will gain an understanding of the importance of the sustainable agriculture system in its broadest sense, from the individual farm, to the local ecosystem, and to communities affected by crop and livestock production practices, both locally and globally. An emphasis on the system allows a larger and more thorough view of the consequences of crop and livestock practices on both human communities and the environment. A systems approach gives you the tools to explore the interconnections between agriculture and other aspects of our environment.

Farmers, laborers, policymakers, researchers, retailers, consumers, and managers have a responsibility to reach toward the goal of sustainable agriculture. This MicroMasters program provides you with the fundamental knowledge so that you can uniquely contribute to strengthen the sustainable agriculture community.