{"id":1997,"date":"2019-04-16T11:26:33","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T17:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/?p=1997"},"modified":"2019-04-16T11:26:33","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T17:26:33","slug":"agriculture-not-just-for-farm-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/agriculture-not-just-for-farm-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Agriculture: Not Just for Farm Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My experience with agriculture has not been a typical one.\u00a0 I thought that you had to grow up on a farm or ranch to be an \u201cag kid\u201d, which is something I certainly had not done.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even raise animals for 4H growing up!<\/p>\n<p>I was roped into agriculture during my junior year of high school; I wanted drop my trigonometry class, and the only other class available was livestock production.\u00a0 My knowledge of anything to do with livestock was minimal.\u00a0 I went and spoke with the teacher, and he said he\u2019d let me in his class on the condition that I joined FFA.\u00a0 I figured that it couldn\u2019t be too hard, and that I could just put minimal effort into it, so I agreed.\u00a0 The next few months would lead me to find a passion in a field that I had completely written off based on my background.<\/p>\n<p>My new teacher, the incredible Mr. McIntosh, placed me on his agronomy team.\u00a0 He described agronomy as a \u201cbear of a contest,\u201d and he was not kidding.\u00a0 My nights would consist of me studying crops, forages, seeds, weeds, insects, and soil for at least two hours, sometimes more!\u00a0 Every week at practice, Mr. Mac would drill the team and keep score to see who was studying or not.\u00a0 Practices became very heated (yet very friendly) competitions between the four of us; I loved every second of it.\u00a0 That semester ended with us being the state champion team.<\/p>\n<p>Next year, my senior year, I competed in the Farm and Agribusiness Management contest.\u00a0 I liked the Agronomy contest a lot, but I loved this one.\u00a0 Again, I studied and studied, competed with my teammates, and again we were state champions.\u00a0 This time I was even the high scoring individual in the state.\u00a0 However, something was different about this year; I didn\u2019t want my career in agriculture to end with high school FFA.\u00a0 When it came time to declare my major, I knew what I wanted.\u00a0 I put down Agricultural Business.<\/p>\n<p>Now, as a soon-to-be junior here at the University of Wyoming, I have made in effort to learn about and be involved with agriculture as much as I can.\u00a0 I am an active member Alpha Gamma Rho (the agricultural fraternity on campus), Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers, and I work for the College of Agriculture Extension office.\u00a0 This summer, I will be interning in Ithaca, New York for a software company that develops risk management and insurance tools for farmers and ranchers.\u00a0 It is really incredible where this journey in agriculture has taken me, and I am excited to see where I end up!<\/p>\n<p>-Wes Taylor<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1998\" src=\"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-content\/uploads\/Agriculture-Not-Just-for-Farm-Kids-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-content\/uploads\/Agriculture-Not-Just-for-Farm-Kids-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-content\/uploads\/Agriculture-Not-Just-for-Farm-Kids-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-content\/uploads\/Agriculture-Not-Just-for-Farm-Kids.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My experience with agriculture has not been a typical one.\u00a0 I thought that you had to grow up on a farm or ranch to be an \u201cag kid\u201d, which is something I certainly had not done.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even raise animals for 4H growing up! I was roped into agriculture during my junior year of &#8230; <a title=\"Agriculture: Not Just for Farm Kids\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/agriculture-not-just-for-farm-kids\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Agriculture: Not Just for Farm Kids\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambassador-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Le20-wd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1999,"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions\/1999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyoextension.org\/agambassadors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}