For some time now, there has been a trend, following admissions to higher education, for young people to be reluctant to take up studies that are highly relevant to the agricultural sector, such as agronomy, veterinary medicine and animal sciences. There is also a shortage of engineers, who are being fought over in other sectors.
For this reason, the Agrokoncerns Group has been actively cooperating with educational institutions for several years. This year, agribusiness representatives visited more than 50 schools and gymnasiums in the country. The aim of these meetings is to provide young people with a more in-depth insight into today’s agricultural sector and the opportunities it offers.
Onutė Verygaitė, HR and Project Manager at Agrokoncernas GDP, who visits schools, observes that students perceive working in the agricultural sector as very physically demanding, low-paid and not prestigious. Many of them have an understanding of the agricultural sector that is limited to old stereotypes they have inherited from their parents or even grandparents. “We have a very strong motivation to educate students and break down old stereotypes, because agriculture is one of the fastest modernising sectors. Today, we are already talking about precision technologies, innovation, robotics, artificial intelligence, which are slowly becoming an integral part of agribusiness. It is also a particularly promising area because it is the agri-sector that provides us with the food that the world needs more and more of”, says O. Verygaitė. Old stereotypes discourage choices The strategy of communicating directly with schoolchildren about today’s agribusiness sector is a purposeful one. “The Agrokoncerno Group is developing a strategic project worth more than 300 million euros. Agrokoncernas GDP, the company she founded, plans to build one of Europe’s most modern deep-grain processing plants in Šiauliai’s Kuršėnai district in the next five years. It is already clear that around 250 professionals will be needed, which is already a shortage in the market. That’s why the company is already organising meetings with students aged 9 to 12, as they will be the generation whose competences will be needed for the new projects. O. Verygaitė said that cooperation with educational institutions can be one way to help ensure that the right specialists are available. “That’s why we are actively cooperating with educational institutions, taking additional steps to help young people gain knowledge, to share our realistic expectations as an employer, and to talk to young people about entrepreneurship, technology, and the other competences they will need,” said O. Verygaitė. Robots are already at work in the fields Agrokocerno Group organised three days of Great Field Days for the country’s most advanced farmers, where they shared the information gathered by their scientific department, the results of the research carried out, and the results of the practical tests, as well as showcased the newest agricultural machinery. As part of this event, it was decided to organise a conference on “Entrepreneurship and Artificial Intelligence in Today’s Careers”. More than 100 career counsellors from all over Lithuania were invited. “We organised the conference with a very clear objective. Career counsellors are the people who help young people choose their studies and provide career guidance. That is why we wanted to show them up close not only today’s agribusiness, its people and infrastructure, but also to give them a glimpse of what can be expected in the near future,” said O. Verygaitė.
Arnas Radzevičius, Commercial Director of Agrokoncernas, presented to the career counsellors 10 innovations that are changing everyday life not only in the agricultural sector, but in all of us. These include autonomous agricultural machines, precision technologies, digitalisation, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and many other technological solutions that go hand in hand with chemistry, biology, biochemistry, physics and other natural and applied sciences. “In the past, agriculture was perceived very narrowly, but today it is a very exciting, dynamic and rapidly developing sector. For example, we were the first in the Baltics to bring a robot for monotonous agricultural work to our farm. I think that in five years’ time, or even sooner, we will see more and more self-driving, unmanned agricultural machinery in the fields. We are on the cusp of major changes”, predicts A. Radzevičius. Artificial intelligence will also change university methodologies According to O. Verygaitė, the topics of the conference on agricultural innovation, artificial intelligence and youth entrepreneurship were purposefully chosen. “Thanks to digitalisation, artificial intelligence, technology and certain tools, the agricultural sector is becoming more and more mind-driven, with less and less need for human manual labour. It is very important to talk about this, because young people come out of school or university into a different world with which they are not familiar. For example, the scale of our organisation, our cash flow, the speed of innovation, the development of our business in response to the market – all of these require both specific knowledge and competences,” says the HR and Project Manager.
Although artificial intelligence has only recently become a topic of discussion, Linas Petkevičius, associate professor at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Vilnius University, has no doubt that its possibilities will change the labour market. He said that we already have many tools at our disposal, which will only get better in the future. While artificial intelligence and other technological solutions will make our daily lives much easier, they are also likely to reduce the need for workers and, in some areas, completely replace humans. “There is already a debate about whether written work is the right way to assess knowledge. Students are beginning to use artificial intelligence tools that can be distinguished from self-written work by inadvertent mistakes, such as “I am a robot and I can’t answer this question accurately”. Needs are also changing – not only knowledge, but also competences on how to use technology and exploit its full potential will help you pursue your career”, L. Petkevičius. Entrepreneurship is not something innate, but something that is nurtured Professional business consultant and mentor of young entrepreneurs, Žanas Gongapševas, shared his experience of working with students who dream of, or are already actually developing, their first businesses with the career professionals gathered at the conference. The biggest problem, he says, is that today’s education system focuses very little on competences such as financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and at least a minimum knowledge of economic laws. Not to mention innovations and technologies that are already widely used but have not yet reached schools.
“No one teaches even a basic skill like planning at school. It’s not enough to have good ideas in life – you need to be able to analyse, plan and organise. Something else I notice from my interactions with young people is that they are very much lacking a broader approach. Many of them think very narrowly, limiting their ideas to their city, or at best their country. After all, we live in a global world, so we should encourage them to go beyond the borders of their own country,” says the mentor to young entrepreneurs. Ž. Gongapševas notes that there is still a widespread belief that entrepreneurship is innate and not something everyone has. But a mentor who works extensively with young people says it is also a competency to be developed. Hands-on activities, simulations and projects in schools are yielding very good results and changing young people’s attitudes and perceptions of the business world. Career counsellors, who are already at the school bench, welcomed this agribusiness initiative not only to introduce their activities, but also to broaden their horizons and provide them with additional knowledge and competences. Professionals working with young people agree that a new generation is coming of age that has a lot of potential, but faces many challenges in choosing what is most relevant and viable for them, due to the high flow of information, the fast pace and the habits shaped by both technology and a changing environment. “It was very useful to meet and talk to people who work closely with students, who know what challenges they face, what they are interested in and what competences they have. I think that this is definitely not the first event of this kind, because we, as a group of companies, have set a goal to create progress in the agribusiness of the whole country, and it is impossible to do this without young people,” – said O. Verygaitė. The “Agrokoncernas” Group has already signed agreements with more than 10 students who are planning to pursue studies related to the agro-industry after school. They are paid a stipend and their tuition fees will also be covered. These agreements guarantee a job after your studies and open up other career opportunities.
