What factors influence a student’s decision to return to the family farm following college graduation? That is what students in Katie Dentzman’s sociology class sought to find out this semester.
Dentzman, assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, typically has students in her SOC 350: Women in Agriculture and the Food System class create a set of survey questions surrounding a topic of their choice, employing survey creation concepts they’ve learned in class. This semester, however, a common theme surfaced among the students’ proposed surveys – what factors influence students’ decision to return to their family farm or seek off-farm employment?
Rather than evaluating each survey individually, the students combined and analyzed all their data.
“It was a lot of fun to see the small trends having significant impacts on the data,” Dentzman said.
Each student chose a different area to focus their questions on. These included how things like the farm size, the number of siblings a student has, the marital status of the student’s parents, and what major the student was studying impact their intention to return to a family farm.
“There’s not a lot of data out there on diverse farmers, so it was neat to be able to identify gaps in the existing research and come up with survey questions to help fill in those holes,” said Lydia Moses, senior in agronomy.
Once the students had narrowed down their questions, they randomly selected junior- and senior-classified students from College of Agriculture and Life Sciences academic departments. A total of 69 students submitted responses to the surveys.
Based on the survey results, the students found that 41% of students from a family farm were either “definitely not” or “probably not” going to return to the farm after college graduation. Further, 21% were unsure if they would return, and 38% reported they would “probably yes” or “definitely yes” return to the farm.
Source: iastate.edu
Photo Credit: GettyImages-pixdeluxe
Categories: Iowa, General