Agribusiness

Everything has a business side. Even agriculture.

Everything has a business side, and that includes industries connected with agriculture. Agriculture as an industry, or agribusiness, refers to all businesses engaged in the production, wholesale, and processing levels of the food supply chain. Agribusiness contributes over $1 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product annually. All disciplines in business are involved at virtually every stage. Offering a series of agribusiness courses meets the needs of students who are either currently engaged in, or wish to be part of, the agribusiness sector of economies worldwide. These courses pair nicely with nearly all business majors as an upper level elective.

Agricultural Business (New area of interest officially starting Fall 2022)

• AGBU 302-Introduction to Agricultural Economics
• AGBU 303-Farm and Ranch Management
• AGBU 306-Agricultural Marketing
• AGBU 405-Agricultural Finance
• Advisor approved upper-level course

Looking at agriculture's big picture.

AGBU 302 Introduction to Agricultural Economics

This course is a systematic introduction to basic concepts of microeconomics, macroeconomics and international trade theory and their application in the U.S. food and fiber industry. Students will examine current trends and issues in agricultural production and food consumption in a global setting as well as analyze interregional and international movements of agricultural commodities.

Course highlights include:

• Agricultural trade policy and global economy
• Consumer behavior and market demand
• Firm behavior and market supply

 

Expand your career to the business of farming.

AGBU 303 Farm and Ranch Management

This upper level business elective course is designed for anyone who is, or wants to be, involved with agriculture in a business context.

A major key to profitability in any business is controlling costs and increasing income, and agriculture is no different. Learn the skills to be successfully involved in various aspects of agriculture including production, processing, marketing, legal issues and environmental considerations. You will study recordkeeping, use of commodity markets to lock in sale prices, financing, insurance, renting versus buying, immigration, contractual relations with others, OSHA and environmental issues, along with many other agricultural and business-related topics.

The course will feature guest speakers who are experts in agribusiness. Learn from their successes and, just as importantly, from where things went wrong and how they might do things differently.

Course highlights include:

• Introduce the principles of farm organization, management and operations
• Explore legal aspects of agriculture
• Identify sound financial practices in agricultural management
• Discover global issues related to agribusiness
• Guest speakers who are experts in agribusiness - their successes and how they might do things differently

 

Drones are the future of agriculture.

AGBU 304 Business Technology with Advanced Agricultural Applications

This upper level business elective course is designed to provide students with hands-on skills to enter the agricultural business realm of drone technology. The skills developed within this course will enable students to understand Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) capabilities and how to model and simulate mission planning scenarios. Specific topics include photogrammetry, field mapping/route planning, weather patterns/airspace guidelines, flight simulations and statistical selection.

Course highlights include:

• Understand how to fly a drone (in person, depending on Covid-19 restrictions, or via a flight simulator)
• Prepare students to take the FAA Part 107 Examination
• Teach students how the agricultural industry is leveraging advanced technology
• Enable students to interpret sophisticated data sets
• Learn how to perform complex modeling and simulation scenarios

 

Marketing agricultural products.

AGBU 306 Agricultural Marketing

Students learn to apply basic economic theory to the estimation of price. Topics include food markets, agricultural prices and marketing costs, government intervention in food marketing, and commodity marketing.

Course highlights include:

• How the food marketing systems responds to social and technological change
• How agricultural price is determined
• Explore the impacts of changing consumer preferences on livestock, dairy, poultry, and grain markets

Financial management in agriculture.

AGBU 405 Agricultural Finance

This course is an introduction to modern concepts and tools of finance, developed and applied to the agricultural sector. Students will learn financial tools and techniques used by a financial manager of an agribusiness for planning, analyzing, and controlling business performance in agriculture and related financial markets.

Course highlights include:

• Use capital budgeting techniques to rank agricultural investment alternatives
• Evaluate the financial performance of an agricultural business
• Identify financial and business risk